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541: Bloodwork Lies and Why Nutrition & Genetics Matter, Dr. Tyler Panzner
https://learntruehealth.com/bloodwork-lies-and-why-nutrition-genetics-matter
In this fascinating and deeply informative episode, Dr. Tyler Panzner—PhD scientist and functional genetic expert—joins us to explore the groundbreaking world of personalized health through genetic testing. He shares how our unique DNA impacts everything from nutrient absorption to neurotransmitter balance, and why many popular supplements can do more harm than good if taken without understanding your genetics. Dr. Panzner’s mission is to help people decode their own biological blueprint to optimize mood, energy, immunity, and overall well-being. Whether you struggle with anxiety, fatigue, or just want to understand how your body really works, this episode offers powerful insights into the future of natural, personalized medicine.
Highlights:
- Dr. Tyler Panzner uses DNA testing to create hyper-personalized protocols that target disrupted cell signaling pathways for better health outcomes.
- The root cause of anxiety can vary—histamine, glutamate, adrenaline, GABA, or serotonin imbalances—so treatment must be tailored individually.
- Many supplements marketed as healthy, like turmeric or resveratrol, can worsen symptoms in those with certain genetic mutations.
- Receptor mutations, such as with vitamin D, can make blood levels appear normal while cells remain deficient and unresponsive.
- Functional genomics reveals why some people react poorly to common supplements and highlights the need for informed, precise protocols.
- Magnesium, vitamin D, and fish oil are generally safe, but even these can be harmful in genetically sensitive individuals.
- Symptoms like fatigue, eczema, or mood swings may result from nutrient imbalances that are invisible in standard blood work.
- Dr. Panzner recommends starting with low doses and understanding supplement pharmacology before experimenting with new protocols.
- Histamine isn't just about allergies—it also plays a major role in mood regulation, energy, and inflammation in genetically sensitive people.
- Genetic testing can reveal predispositions to issues like poor detoxification, nutrient absorption, and neurotransmitter imbalances.
Intro:
Hello True Health Seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast.
Well, since you last heard from me, I had a birthday. I am now officially 45. I feel 30, which just goes to show, when you eat healthy and hydrate and take your supplements and move your body in a way that brings you joy and ground every day, and just geek out on holistic health stuff like I do that you can feel younger as you age. I was just thinking about that this morning.
The body I had 10 years ago when I started this podcast—started this podcast nine years ago—we actually just surpassed our nine-year anniversary for this podcast, which is crazy. It's awesome. I feel like I should be hitting buttons to make noises, but I won't torture you guys with the little celebratory noises. So yes, the Learn True Health podcast is nine years old. Pretty awesome.
The body I had 10 years ago is so different. I'm thinking I have a whole new skeletal system. We have a whole new set of bones. I think it takes seven years to replace all those cells. It just takes a few days to replace all our skin. It takes a few months to replace a lot of our major systems of our body because our cells turn over.
Think of our red blood cells. Every 90 days, we have a whole new set of red blood cells, and the body is constantly regenerating. It's just this amazing concept. If you think about it, you are not the same as you were seven years ago. Most of your body isn't even the same as it was a year ago.
For those people who have been sick for a long time—and I was sick for many years—I don't consider myself done in terms of health or healing. I'm still on my own healing journey, but I overcame major health issues, and I turned around and went, “I have to do this podcast. I have to share with the world,” because so many people are sick and suffering and don't know how to heal themselves, how to learn true health, how to learn how to gain true health.
Thinking back to myself 10 years ago, I was already well into my healing journey. I had already achieved so many health goals 10 years ago. But looking back, I have a whole new level of energy that I didn't even know was possible 10 years ago.
Looking back 20 years ago, back when I was in the thick of just the beginning of really struggling with my health and trying to climb up a well—I’d slip back down. I’d climb up, find another footing, slip back down—and I hadn't found the answers yet. I was still struggling and looking and learning, and I never would have believed that I would be able to feel as good as I feel now.
This is what I want for you. I know that there are people listening who have been health nuts for years. You're doing everything right. You just want to take your health to the next level. Then there are people who are in the same position that I was in, where you wake up achy or tired, or you have digestive issues, you have hormone issues, and maybe you have skin issues. Maybe it's an external thing.
People can see that something's off, and you really want to resolve that. Maybe it's internal and people can't see that you're suffering. Sometimes I don't know which one's worse—if you have a lot of acne or skin or hair issues and you're self-conscious of everyone seeing your health problems, or no one sees your health problems and it's all internal and you're suffering, but no one can see you're suffering. Both are pretty not-great places to be in, and I want to help you resolve whatever. Wherever you are, wherever your pain points are, wherever your suffering is.
Keep listening to this podcast, because my goal is to bring you the resources and the tools for you to transform that—to be able to get yourself, climb out of that well. Imagine your body 10 years from now. It doesn't even need to be 10 years from now, but I just want you to imagine 10 years from now. You wake up full of energy, full of vitality, totally forgetting all of these health issues you currently have because they’re long gone.
Then come back and maybe think a little bit closer to now. Think a year from now. Imagine your body a year from now, waking up full of energy, having overcome major issues, learned so much, and you see yourself eating even better. You see yourself easily able to perform these new healthy habits, where you're cooking more meals, you're spending more quality time with friends and family, eating in a healthy way instead of maybe staying up late, drinking alcohol or sugar or processed food or baked foods. You see yourself doing the healthy habits that you know will rebuild your health, but you see yourself doing them in a way that isn't a struggle because you already mastered that habit.
I want you to get my book Addicted to Wellness. If you go to learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness, it’ll take you straight to my book. It’s phenomenal. I know I’m tooting my own horn here, but it really is a phenomenal way that you can, in a fun way, master the health habits that will take your body to the next level, that will take your energy, digestion, your mood, your spirit to the next level.
Every week, you get challenged to do between one and four health challenges. You get to document it in the morning and at night. It’s super easy. It’s just five to ten minutes in the morning, five to ten minutes in the evening. You’ll figure out how to carve it into your day and you just do the best you can. Maybe you can only do the mornings and then sometimes in the evenings, you forgot to do it. It’s okay.
It’s about learning. The process of doing the journaling—you’re prompted and it draws out of you the learning so that you can have these epiphanies, these aha moments, these breakthroughs. You get to practice every day incorporating a new healthy habit that is science-based, that transforms your life.
It’s going to be one of the best books if you jump in and do it. It will be. I promise you, it will be one of the best books you’ve ever jumped into and done like a workshop. So get my book. I want you to experience that workshop-style feeling of being with me, doing these healthy habits that take you to the next level.
If you want a one-on-one with me, I’d love to be your health coach. You can go to learntruehealth.com and in the menu, select “Work with Ashley James.” If you want to chat with me for free, you can do that too. Go to “Work with Ashley James” in the menu of learntruehealth.com and we can chat. I made this book so that my knowledge was accessible to you.
I’ve done over 500 interviews, but before I even started the podcast, I was a holistic health expert working alongside naturopathic doctors and I’ve been helping thousands of people since 2005. Even before working in the supplements and the diet side of things, I was doing the mind and mental coaching to help people have massive breakthroughs around ending anxiety completely.
I have a tool that eliminates anxiety, that gives you control back. It’s like you now have control like a light switch. You can turn anxiety off in the moment. I help people to end phobias. I help people to completely resolve all limiting decisions, negative beliefs, and unresolved negative emotions from the past.
If you think of a memory from your past and you still feel that negative emotion in the now, that’s an unresolved negative emotion that’s stored in your body. That’s hurting you. I have a tool that I do with people that completely resolves it. I’ve been doing that work since 2005.
Then I jumped into the physical health side of things. In 2011 is when I started to do my training and work with clients. So I've been in this industry for a long time helping people. That's why I created my books. I wanted to make what I know accessible for you. So get my book and also give my book to those you care about, because if someone is struggling that you love, that you care about, and you want to help them to get a leg up.
I cover the foundations of health that will, within days—seven days—of doing these habits, they will have more energy. There's one technique, there's one very easy habit—it's actually a free habit to do—that will increase energy production by 25%. Your cellular energy production will be increased by 25 percent. That means you can quit coffee, you can quit those gross energy drinks or the sugar that you go to in the afternoon for a pick-me-up. It helps your cells. It helps your mitochondria become healthier and healthier and helps you to break those unhealthy habits because we're self-medicating as a society.
We go to caffeine and alcohol and sugar to self-regulate our nervous system when we're actually just harming ourselves and harming our cellular health further. We have to remember that one in three people right now will have a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. Very similar number for diabetes and heart disease and obesity. These are lifestyle and these are nutrition-related issues.
Through my book and through the information I cover on my podcast, I help you to reverse and prevent disease. That's very important. We want to reverse and prevent it. If you choose to work with me, I will help you to reverse and to prevent disease. That's another thing I do is I regularly work with people who have type 2 diabetes and by the time they're done working with me, they no longer have type 2 diabetes. Their blood work is amazing. So my goal is to help people get so healthy that their doctor takes them off all their meds because they quote unquote no longer need the meds.
I want you to be in your 90s, on no medications, being able to run marathons. I have friends that do that. I have friends in their 80s and 90s that are healthy. That's the goal.
When we don't have a goal, we're kind of flailing in life and just—we're just—pleasure seekers. Just, “Oh, ice cream sounds good,” “Oh, a coffee, a latte sounds good.” We're just pleasure seekers. Just, “Oh, ice cream sounds good,” “Oh, a coffee, a latte sounds good.” We're not thinking about everything you put in your mouth is either hurting you or building you up. I'm guilty of that too. We're human. It's the human condition.
I love exploring this concept of sin, because I don't think we fully understand this idea of sin—and someone explained it to me once. It was a pastor that said sin is missing the mark. It just struck me so much because I thought, sin is this dark evil. The way they painted it in Sunday school was that sin is this dark shame, that we have this evil, and it's not that at all. It's what we're missing. It's an act. It's an action. It's a behavior that misses the mark.
You're shooting an arrow and it didn't hit the bullseye. If you imagine that there's this perfect bullseye in life where you're aiming for Christ-behavior: I'm loving everyone, I'm forgiving everyone, I'm treating my body as a gift that God gave me, a temple that God gave me. So that is the bullseye, and any behavior that doesn't align up with the bullseye is sin. So don't feel shame, don't feel guilt. That just kind of makes us want to not even try. Instead, get excited about how close you can get to that mark.
So in my book I talk about good, better, best. Well, if all of us had the time and the resources, we would all be juicing our freshly grown organic produce that we grew ourselves, but not everyone has the time for that. So that might be best, but good might be I have some frozen organic vegetables and I'm going to make sure that I eat two cups of vegetables at this meal. Better might be I have some kale and some lettuce and some tomatoes. I'm going to make myself a salad before I eat my meal and I'm going to make sure I get some lentils in there too, for added fiber and all the wonderful benefits of lentils. The best, I said, might be you have, you grew your own or you went to a fresh produce stand and it's organic.
Every single time you choose to put something in your mouth, ask yourself: is this good, better, or best? Or is this not even good? This is not good for me. What am I doing? Am I self-soothing, like an adult pacifier? Am I looking to just suck on my binky because I'm not feeling good, so I'm reaching for sugar? What could I do instead? Can I drink a glass of water, go for a five-minute walk, and that will actually be healthier for my nervous system? Go walk on the earth barefoot in the grass. That would be amazing for my nervous system. That will calm me down. Do some deep breathing and that will give me a better result than eating some sugar right now. Because the sugar will give me that dopamine, but later on negatively impacts my sleep, so the very next day I crave more.
We need to stop the vicious cycle, because right now we are self-soothing with inappropriate or unhealthy choices, and that's just what we do. That's what we do, but we're not informed. Now I'm informing you. So get my book, because it will help inform your choices so that you don't miss the mark, so that you are aiming for that sinless life. Shift how you view that term sin. Am I aiming for the bullseye that is creating the healthiest body, creating the healthiest emotional body, mental body, spiritual body, and physical body? That includes your relationships. How do you treat people? How do you treat yourself? So you can expand on that.
Am I aiming for what is the healthiest or am I making choices that would definitely not be hitting that bullseye? Ask yourself, can I make a better choice? I do this. Oh, that looks really delicious. I reach for the package and then I make myself read the ingredients. If I read the entire list of ingredients and I still think that's good for me, then I'll buy it. But 99% of the time I get halfway down, not even halfway down the list, and I start reading canola oil. No, I'm putting it back.
Once you learn what that ingredient does to your body, you can't go back. You just don't want that in you. There are healthier ways. If you need some sort of oral pleasure, there are healthier choices that are going to give you great oral pleasure. Eat some fresh fruit. Figure, you could dip it in melted dark chocolate if you need to. If you need some oral pleasure. But figure out a way that cuts out what is harming you. If you associate it with: I'm either aiming for the bullseye or I'm hurting my body, then that might give you a better perspective. Then ask yourself good, better, best. With my energy and resources that I have right now, what kind of decision can I make that's even better?
If you're holding two different cans. You can get some Chef Boyardee or some kind of really chemical-laden thing. You have a can of refried beans. I could put refried beans on rice cakes. Just two totally different things. They're both canned foods. They both maybe cost about the same. Maybe refried beans cost a little less. But one's going to be a healthier choice. That's just the thing. Compare what you're choosing to a healthier choice.
Should I stay up late tonight or should I go to bed early and listen to an audiobook? Well, if you go to bed early, you're going to wake up with more energy tomorrow. But most of us stay up late because we want that dopamine seeking late at night. That's why if you go—I promise to give myself dopamine seeking first thing in the morning. Get up in the morning. You could go for a walk while listening to a podcast instead of last night staying up late watching Netflix or something. It's about making these little tweaks, but my book helps guide you in that direction so that it's fun.
Well, thank you so much for listening to my little rant here. I felt it was in my heart to share this with you, because the reason why you listen to the Holistic Health Podcast is to take your health to the next level, and I have this tool for you and I want to make sure you know about it. My guest today is so amazing. You're going to love today's interview. This is definitely one of those episodes where you share with your friends. I definitely have a few friends I'm sharing this episode with because my jaw was on the floor several times.
I learned so much from today's guest, and he talked about supplements a few times. I want you to know that my favorite place to get supplements is TakeYourSupplements.com. It is a completely different experience buying from them than just going on Amazon or going to wherever you buy supplements.
First of all, you're getting it straight from the company. On Amazon, it's scary—but there's a lot of ripoff, counterfeit supplements. It's pretty scary. I know some people who've done third-party testing on the supplements on Amazon, and it's buyer beware. So with TakeYourSupplements.com, not only are you getting it straight from the company and they have wonderful quality—I've been working with their brands since 2011, and I've been very impressed with their quality—you get 90 essential nutrients, all of the essential nutrients your body needs, 60 of which are minerals.
You get a personalized holistic health coach that works with you. Now, they're $90 an hour, but they're giving their time to you for free to help you set up exactly what supplements you need. What they do is they have a system that allows them to understand what nutrient deficiencies you have based on your symptoms. This is designed by one of my mentors, Dr. Joel Wallach, who's an amazing genius at this. He's the reason why I'm still alive today, my husband's still alive today. He helped us overcome major diseases, and he was the reason why I was able to conceive our son naturally. I was told I'd never have kids. His entire program is what informs TakeYourSupplements.com.
You will be able to work one-on-one with a very well-trained coach who has been trained by these naturopathic doctors. They will help you by understanding your symptoms. They'll help you get exactly the type of supplements you need—very high quality. Due to the fact that it's high quality, we would think it would be extremely expensive, but it is not the most expensive supplements out there. Actually, we can work within any budget.
Go to TakeYourSupplements.com. Check it out. Especially after listening to this episode, you're going to hear about some supplements you're going to want to get on. I would definitely recommend just giving them a try. I say give them 90 days. Give them three months on their program, because your body regenerates new cells.
I talked about this—that you have new red blood cells within 90 days. A lot of your soft tissue replaces itself at that time. So give your body enough months on their program so that you can have these new, healthy cells with the full amount of nutrients they require to function optimally.
In the first month of being on their program, the clients that I've worked with say they get more energy, better sleep, better mental clarity—that's a given—and then better digestion. A lot of times digestive issues are able to be completely corrected, and then blood sugar issues corrected, and erectile dysfunction corrected. These are some major issues within the three-month mark that are corrected. That's very exciting.
So go to TakeYourSupplements.com for that.
Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing my podcast with those you care about. You're going to love today's interview. Enjoy.
Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I'm your host, Ashley James. This is episode 541.
Ashley James (0:21:12.064)
I am so excited for today's guest. I have Dr. Tyler Panzer here, and we're going to make sure that the links to everything that he does are in the show notes of today's podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com and wherever you listen.
Your website—is “Dr” and then Tyler Panzer. I will spell that: P-A-N-Z-N-E-R. I get tripped up because I'm from Canada, and it's a Zed, not a Z. I live in the States now, so I've learned it's Z.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (0:21:43.070)
Don't worry, you're not the first one to mess that up. I remember the family reunions we would have and stuff, they'd forget the second N, so no big deal.
But there's that—I like to call it—there's the N sandwich with the Z as the meat. So you have N, Z, N.
Ashley James (0:21:58.346)
Yes, there you go. P-A-N-Z-N-E-R. Of course, the links to Dr. Tyler's website will be in the show notes.
I got to say, I absolutely love your videos. If you haven't seen Dr. Tyler on Instagram, videos on Instagram or YouTube Shorts or Facebook Reels, Shorts—whatever it's called.
You've got amazing content, just real mind-blowing. I love how you do it in bite-size chunks that's meaningful. I think a lot of content creators try to create it. I wouldn't, again, I don't label you as a content creator because you're way more than that. But content creators try to think, what can I do in 15 seconds to hook people or what can I do in 30 seconds?
I think from what I've observed, you're thinking, what life-changing, mind-exploding content can I educate someone in 30 seconds? You take really complex health issues and then you address it in such an easily digestible way that I'm just addicted to scrolling through and watching all of your little videos because you explain cellular biology and our genetics in a way that is—I haven't seen anywhere else.
So I'm very excited to really have a deep conversation with you today.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (0:23:25.625)
Yes, well, thank you so much. Yes, I like to think of myself as more than a content creator. So I do appreciate that.
Yes, for better or worse, I never just have a little bit to say. So I've tried to make it even more simple, but I really value people knowinga bout the why. I'm a scientist by training. I love the why. I feel like my content is really for people that really want to understand the why.
A lot of people talk about the what, and it's just pieces of information, but I want to connect that information and give knowledge, and then help you turn that into wisdom. Not just here's a food that can help you if there's this going on. What are the risks of the food?
I'm sure you're aware nowadays it's so much counterintuitive advice. Eat carnivore. Don't eat red meat. Go keto. Don't go keto. Take this supplement. Don't take that supplement. How do you know what to listen to?
These people aren't necessarily right or wrong. They are right or wrong depending on the person. Some people do a lot better with a higher meat diet. Some people with anxiety do great on that supplement, but other people with anxiety, they do bad on that supplement.
So I'm really here to add the level of nuance and help guide people on which types of health information you should, based on your specific cellular makeup, be listening to. Just as importantly, something that a lot of people don't focus on—what should you be avoiding?
I see people every day in my practice that are sicker from the wrong foods, the wrong supplements. These are healthy supplements. We're not talking about cheap supplements. Healthy supplements can make someone better or someone worse even if they have the same condition.
Ashley James (0:25:11.761)
That has a lot to do with that diversity that we're not all identical. We're little snowflakes. Our genetics—it’s so cool. It’s so cool when you dive into genetics, how if one gene is expressing or another gene is dormant, and then there’s epigenetics, because we can have genes turn on and off given either exposure to toxins or deficiency in nutrients or increasing nutrients.
There’s so much going on. I had one person describe the cell. He was a cellular biologist. He said that in one human cell, there’s more going on in a cell than all of Manhattan—the bustling. It’s just because we think of oh, there’s got to be more going on in Manhattan than in a single human cell, but actually, no, there’s more going on in a single human cell. It’s so crazy. It’s so beautiful and brilliant.
The more I study the human body, the more I see God. That’s just a personal thing. I know everyone is somewhere else. Everyone is on their own journey, whether they see God or not. How could something so brilliant and so in balance and so harmonious and so complex come from nothing and chaos? The more I look at the body, the more I’m in awe. I love learning from you.
You have a lot of content about anxiety. You’ve had your story mimic mine in that I grew up with anxiety but didn’t even know I had anxiety until one day I was able to turn it off and I was, my gosh. That was my entire childhood. Then I started to learn what to do and what not to do to either increase it or decrease it. But you take it to this amazing level where you show us that certain supplements, certain foods, certain lifestyle things can, and even genetics can make it so that we either have too much adrenaline or there’s certain supplements that make it so that the adrenaline doesn’t get cleared. So that’s really fascinating. I definitely want to dive into that at some point, but I’d love to start off by talking about your story and also your professional background.
I want to know what happened in your life that made you go, oh this is the direction I want to go in. Did you have a single aha moment where you like seven and you woke up one day and said, that’s it, I’m studying this? Was it just over time? Did something happen that made you want to go down this road?
Dr. Tyler Panzner (0:27:51.272)
Yes, yes, happy to share a pretty unique story trajectory here. I've always loved animals. I love biology. I've always been a biology kid.
Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter was my idol. I love that stuff. I wanted to be a herpetologist, a veterinarian, but specifically for reptiles, was interested in more of the macro biology at the animal level or wildlife biologist. But I remember AP Biology class, I think in 10th grade, we learned about cells. It's so funny that you mentioned this.
I thought. There is a city. Once we learned about all the organelles and stuff and saw videos of cells, single cells, I thought of the city analogy too. There is a city inside of each and every one of our cells that are all working in tandem to communicate across trillions of different cells.
How do these cells know where to go, when to do these things, when to stop these things, how to make us healthy when we're sick, how to heal a bone when we break a bone? It just fascinated me. So that's when I really got interested in the more cellular side of things. I always wanted to go to college, and I didn't want to do pre-med. So I went to the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida.
For the majors, typically there is to go pre-med to prepare you for medical school. But I never wanted to be, well, back then even a doctor. I didn't want to be a physician. I didn't want people that are sick yelling at me to do my job, what to do, this or that. I didn't want to work with people. I wanted to work with cells. Ironically enough, here we are now full circle. I work with people, but we'll get to that.
I remember another pivotal moment. I think it was junior sophomore junior year, first lesson of organic chemistry the professor drew a molecule on the board and said, this is caffeine. Caffeine binds receptors on your cells and it wakes you up. It makes you feel better or depending on the person you may feel anxious.
I looked down on my coffee on my desk and I'm like, my God, there's a cause and an effect. It's not magical unicorn magic why you drink this liquid and I feel more energized.
I've always been big into fitness. I would take the pre-workout powders and stuff. I started researching that, and so this pre-workout powder makes me feel more euphoric than caffeine. It doesn't just have caffeine. It has L-tyrosine, which is the building block to dopamine. Go figure. So when I have the caffeine, it makes me release dopamine, and with the tyrosine, it's a double whammy. I feel even better. So that was another big aha moment for me down what's the pharmacology route of things?
Then there was a third pivotal moment in my cell metabolism course. I was at office hours with my professor. This was, I think, late junior, early senior year. What do I want to do afterwards? Based on the questions I was asking, have you looked into pharmacology? I was looking into pharmacy. Again, I didn't want people yelling at me, give me my drugs, this or that. Research what pharmacology was. In the trenches, in the lab. Researching new things and finding out new things that no one else has ever done before. I didn't realize what I've been fascinated with, I was selling pre-workout powders I made in my dorm room to people at the gym. Everyone loved it. I was doing all that. That was the study of pharmacology. It all clicked for me. Pharmacology is what I love. I love critical thinking. Everyone could be doing something one way. I'll look at that and say, cool, I'm going to find my own way. That's how I've always been. So that was what made me decide to pursue pharmacology. I ended up jumping right into a PhD right out of undergrad.
Looking back, it was a really big leap of faith. I remember my parents saying, you really want to sign up for five, six more years of school right out the gate? I'm like, yes, why not? I love this stuff. Looking back, it was a great decision, but starting out the PhD it was a big transition. I was around people that I was the youngest person in the class.
There were people that did two years of medical school or they worked in a lab plus medical school. It was a big uphill battle struggle initially to keep up with this really dense graduate-level coursework and stuff.
I did the PhD in pharmacology. I studied anxiety, depression, stem cell research, did my thesis on breast cancer, breast cancer metastasis. From there, I figured out what I want to do for the rest of my life. I did my 23andMe. I thought the report was not very insightful at all. I started researching the raw data myself. I completely changed my lifelong anxiety pretty much overnight by figuring out which genes I had mutated and how to support them. That was the genesis of what I do now, functional genomics.
Finished up my PhD, I worked for a year and a half at an oncology company doing genetic testing for cancer cells. Analyzing this work, I thought, why don't we sequence our healthy cells to figure out how we can make them not become cancerous in the first place? We're doing it backwards here. Instead of getting the genetics for your cancer to figure out what chemo drug you need, why did your cell become cancerous in the first place?
I think it was July of 2022. I started doing my business on the side, one-on-one genetic work with people. I did it with friends and family in the past. To be honest, I didn't really know. I had friends and family, I did it for free and they're biased. My mom will always say, you made me feel better, son. So I was nervous initially doing this.
My way of doing it with people, over time, I realized this is life-changing for so many people. Some people completely change their life within the first week. Other people feel noticeably better within a few months. I'm not going to sit here and act like what I do is the magic bullet cure-all to everything.
At the same point, when we figure out with data exactly what your cells are hardwired to need more of and what they're sensitive to and build protocols around the individual, I don't look at someone and say, You have PCOS, here's my PCOS protocol. You have bloating, here's my gut health protocol. You have mold, here's my mold detox protocol.
I provide the cells with what they're missing and from my experience, what I've seen with hundreds of people I worked with, getting the cells happier allows the cells to do what they should be doing. I essentially replace, provide what's missing, and remove what's in excess and let the cells do their thing.
Ashley James (0:34:59.250)
I love it. I love it. How long have you been working with clients and or patients? I'm not sure what to call them.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (0:35:09.856)
Yes, so me, I'm not a medical doctor, so they are clients, not patients. I'm not the substitute for a medical doctor. I collaborate with them often, but it would be, I think, around two and a half years, January 14th, 2025. I'm not sure when this will air or not. That'll mark two years since I actually left my corporate job and went into doing this full time. I actually got laid off on my 30th birthday and I already was planning on doing something else, but that was the push from the universe, I believe, okay, you're ready to jump into this. So we're coming up on two years doing this full time.
Ashley James (0:35:49.332)
Nice. I love it. I'm again blown away by what you record and put out there. As I watch your videos, I start thinking about, and actually I've sent your videos to friends. I think about, this friend needs this, or this client needs that, or this family member. I imagine you get a lot of referral business just because what you share just makes so much sense.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (0:36:22.144)
Exactly. I haven’t done any paid ad, paid trafficking at all because when these things really do get results, that's why the word of mouth works so well for people. Again, I'm never the first doctor people see. I'm usually at the end of the line. A lot of people have doubts. They lost hope. They've tried all of the ex-doctor's protocol, this doctor's protocol, that.
Again, it's a fixed protocol. I'll just give the example of anxiety—everyone with anxiety has the same underlying cellular root causes. There are infinite flavors of anxiety. I definitely want to talk about, from the cell pathway sides of things, but there are different flavors of any label. I call that a top-down approach. That's how conventional medicine and holistic medicine is practiced nowadays.
It's looking at the label of the diagnosis downwards. Let's treat the diagnosis. I prefer a bottom-up approach. Let's look at the cellular pathways. Every single disease, actually every single symptom, comes down to dysregulated cell signaling.
Now what can cause that? That's a huge list of things. It's not like I snap my fingers, I fix everything, all the cell signaling. But at the end of the day, when you boil it down, these cell pathways are dysregulated. That's what is causing your cells to not feel good. Your cells don't feel good. They're screaming out for help. You get what I call the check engine lights—the bloating, the brain fog, the fatigue, the allergies, the minor aches and pains.
What happens when you don't address a check engine light? Eventually the car breaks down. A lot of these symptoms—most people, they're not sick enough for the hospital, but they're not feeling great. Those are the beginnings of disease if left unaddressed over time. So that's why I say utilize genetics, get clear-cut, instant information where the biggest roadblocks are in your cell pathways, and address it now.
I believe happier, healthier cells today make you feel better today. I believe—I hope to prove throughout my career—that doing that now lowers the chance of chronic disease later in life. Because why wouldn't it? It just makes perfect sense.
Ashley James (0:38:38.562)
I'm a big fan of supplements. At the same time, I'm a big buyer beware, and this is everyone is an individual. Buyer beware. Really, really, I'm a fan and also a critic, I should say. I'm the biggest open-minded skeptic.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (0:38:59.315)
Well, I love that you say that because I'm very pro-supplement, but now that you say it, I'm buyer beware as well, because so many people, they're just following an advertisement. You have anxiety, take this. There's no care for the individual. The people making these supplements, the doctors recommending them, the coaches recommending them, they do not know how they work because they were not trained in pharmacology.
So, my background lets me come over to the holistic space now when I started my company. Ashley, the horror stories—people coming to me from naturopaths, from functional medicine doctors, from DOs—that are so much worse because of the supplements they're on. It just blows my mind that there's no required training for this. You got to go through all this training to prescribe a medication, but it's the wild west here with supplements, and supplement-related injury is a real thing.
So yes, I'm about intentional, data-driven usage of supplements, but I couldn't agree with you more. I'm a skeptic as well. This is why I haven't started a supplement company yet, because I don't want to just promote a supplement and say, everyone, try it.
Ashley James (0:40:11.921)
Right. My husband for years has wanted me to create a line of supplements. I just can't do it. The closest thing I think I would come to is maybe a greens drink, but I can't because of what you said—the issue being that one thing, one man's what cures another man's poison. You talk about this in the curcumin and the turmeric videos that you've done, but I got a story to share with you.
Years ago, I was a business partner with a naturopathic physician, and he was getting on an airplane to go give a health lecture. He woke up feeling under the weather—not anything to write home about. But he's like, I'm going to blow this out of my system. I'm going to take handfuls of my favorite immune-supporting supplements. And he grabbed something, literally took a handful because it's a food—turmeric's a food.
So he took a handful of something that had quercetin, resveratrol, and turmeric in it. Literally a handful of these pills. Just swallows them, heads off to the airport. Again, he wasn't super sick. It was just a little snotty, a little sore throat, raspy—didn't want to walk up into a health lecture sounding like he had a cold, but he figured, I'll just blow this out of me.
Gets on the airplane, proceeds to sweat profusely—just drenched in sweat and lightheaded, kind of out of it, crazy. I guess they noticed because the ambulance came and they took him off the airplane. I don't really know how he got home. Maybe he took a taxi home, but he calls us in bed, unable to even look at his phone. Can't even lift his arms, he's like—and he tells us the story. We're like, my gosh, what happened?
He's like, I need you to do something for me. We need to look this up and figure out—let's look up turmeric, quercetin, resveratrol. He goes, clearly I took too much. It turned out that it affects blood pressure. Caused him to have massively low blood pressure, but also, from what I've learned from your videos, probably had very high adrenaline. He learned his lesson that day. In doing so, I also learned.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (0:42:50.745)
A lot of people don't. A lot of people aren't as educated. This is exactly why I do what I do. There are millions of people every day that are suffering from more minor versions of this. At least he was so sick, he knew, wow, something's very wrong.
But imagine if you dialed that back, I don't know, 80%. So you're just not feeling right. You're not feeling well. That's what millions of people experience every day because they combine all of these natural nutrients. But how natural are they when they're highly, highly concentrated? They're chemically modified. We're getting these natural things in dosages that are so much higher than nature intended. We're also ingesting supplements from all over the world.
Ancestrally, if you could get the turmeric root—that wasn’t around the world. So also, we're combining the most powerful natural things from all over the world in concentrated forms in tandem together. It's crazy that there's not more oversight or people aren't talking about this more.
At the end of the day, the supplement industry isn't that different from the pharmaceutical industry. These are businesses at the end of the day, and that's just the sad reality. As for me, as a holistic practitioner, we need to be aware of this.
Ashley James (0:44:12.625)
I'd say there's less deaths. There's more deaths due to pharmaceutical and even over-the-counter.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (0:44:21.761)
I would agree with that. Absolutely. Yes. I meant, yes, I meant the holistic space is not as radically different exactly as a lot of people in the holistic space tend to make it sound.
Ashley James (0:44:32.573)
Right. So just to give the listener the full picture, because they don't know necessarily what I learned from you in the video, explain why, some people, they take turmeric and it's the best thing that's ever happened to them, and other people take turmeric and they're having panic attacks. Can you explain why quercetin and turmeric, for some people, based on their genetics, is not a great thing?
Dr. Tyler Panzner (0:44:58.315)
Yes, absolutely. So we need to talk about mechanisms. Mechanisms of action is a basic pharmacology principle that basically means what are the things this thing does to my cells in my body.
So curcumin—very great for inflammation. You'll see it marketed for that, which it does do that. Here's the thing too: these supplements don't do good things or bad things. They only do things, and they're good or bad based on the person they're in.
So curcumin—it's a polyphenol. It does help with inflammation. It also slows down the breakdown of adrenaline. So I have genetic mutations in my COMT and MAO genes. This means I don't process dopamine or adrenaline very well. This is why I never have a little bit to say. I'm more type A. I'm very extroverted, loud, and also can be more prone to anxiety because I'm sensitive to these things.
So if I take something like curcumin, I'm slowing down my adrenaline breakdown, even though I already break it down slowly. Curcumin also chelates iron and copper out of the body. Curcumin also has been shown to help lower blood sugar levels.
So these are all mechanisms, but if someone is not prone to stress, and they have very high iron, and they have higher blood sugar, they may feel amazing on curcumin because it's addressing multiple things they have issues with. But if you're someone that's prone to anxiety, has low iron or copper levels, or has low blood sugar levels, then you likely won't respond well to curcumin.
And when you apply this to resveratrol—it has a lot of similar things. It raises adrenaline. It lowers blood sugar. What was the other one that he mentioned? The quercetin. Quercetin as well. These are all different polyphenol-type things.
So you're taking three supplements that all raise adrenaline. They all lower blood sugar. I'm trying to remember if the resveratrol lowers iron—but you see what I'm saying here. So you're taking these things for inflammation, but it's never ever written on the bottle everything that supplement is doing.
There's no education. I heard naturopaths and functional medicine practitioners get training on supplements. I'm trying to get a hold of what that training looks like, because I get it—there isn't zero training. But the number of people that come to me sicker from functional medicine or naturopaths—either those people are bad students, they don't pay attention, or the training is not nearly up to the level that it needs to be.
So yes, again, supplements just do things. Mechanisms. Don't think this supplement helps with anxiety. How does it help with anxiety? What mechanisms? And is that molecular step a step that I need supported?
Ashley James (0:48:00.251)
Yes, and what you just said—in some cases, for example, a magnesium deficiency, and I understand there's different forms of magnesium. Magnesium doesn't treat or cure anxiety. If someone has a significant magnesium deficiency and they're more prone to anxiety, that's going to make it worse.
So then, bring in the magnesium. It's not treating or curing some person that has anxiety but also isn't deficient in magnesium. Magnesium isn't going to magically cure it.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (0:48:37.593)
Exactly, exactly. That's how people use supplements. Now, let me just take four different supplements that help with anxiety, but there are different pathways. So we'll use the example of anxiety. Anxiety comes down to too much excitation, not enough inhibition. This is coming from someone, as I mentioned, I break down dopamine and adrenaline four times slower than a normal person. If you're listening and you've been told throughout your life, “You're too sensitive.” Let it go. You're overthinking things. This is for you here because my life can be amazing sometimes. Sorry. My brain, the highs are high. I'm prone to high dopamine. It gets crazy. I'm a very avid musician, into music, feel the goosebumps from the music I get, even just thinking about music sometimes because I'm so sensitive. But then if I get triggered by something, adrenaline enters the chat, and I can't process that as well. We have excitation.
So cell pathways are what dictate how we feel, how our cells function. I think of it as a puppet. Our cells are puppets, our cell signaling pathways are strings, and the puppeteer are the thoughts we think, the foods we eat, the supplements we take, the inflammation we do or don't have. These all dictate it. So you have things like the adrenaline that you mentioned. I just mentioned my mutations, I have higher adrenaline.
What else excites the brain or excites our cells in general? Adrenaline doesn't just affect your brain cells. It affects every cell in your body. This is why I look at the body as one unified system, because all of your cells get the same signaling across your entire body. So things like histamine. Happy to dive into that more. People think it's just about allergies. Histamine is an excitatory neurotransmitter that promotes wakefulness and alertness.
They use antihistamine medications prescribed for sleep or anxiety on label or use for those. What do you think could happen if there's too much histamine signaling in your body? You're more anxious. You're not sleeping as well. You have things like glutamate. That's another neurotransmitter that wakes up the brain. Foods we eat, supplements we take affect that as well. So you see, those are three different pathways just there. Is your anxiety more of an adrenaline thing? Is it more of a glutamate thing? Is it more of a histamine thing?
You don't know because you're just taking a supplement that says it helps with anxiety, but you have no idea if that's what you actually need. On the flip side, what calms down the brain? There are things like the GABA system that pumps the brakes, the serotonin system that can pump the brakes as well. You see how there are these different strings telling your puppets what to do for your cells to be stressed or overstimulated, or calm, or help you go to sleep.
That's how my brain looks at these things. I'm really excited. I've been working on a course series. Here's the thing I was trying to think about: How do I educate people if I want to make a course that anyone could watch about headaches and help a lot of people with headaches? What would I make the course about? I would talk about the cell signaling pathways. Well, guess what? The same cell signaling pathways involved with headaches and migraines are also involved with anxiety.
They are also involved with brain fog, insomnia, or chronic pain. My point here is that these same cell pathways cause various different diseases and ailments. It just depends on which pathway.
Am I losing it here? I'm trying to figure out how to condense this down.
These pathways, the puppets of your cells—you have around 30 trillion puppets in your body, 30 trillion cells. When you get anxious and you pull that adrenaline string, there's more adrenaline signaling in your body. Your heart rate goes up. You're thinking anxious thoughts. Your body constricts blood vessels. You open up your airways. This adrenaline is affecting every one of the cells in your body.
High histamine—some people have brain fog. Some people have allergies. Some people have low blood pressure, POTS. Some people have arthritis.
These are all different manifestations of disrupted cell signaling pathways. That's why when I help someone with their histamine issues, their headaches go away. They're more clear-headed. Their ADHD symptoms may be going away. They sleep better. Their joint pain feels better because we're not looking at just the joint pain. We're looking at the entire signaling system that's overactive.
Ashley James (0:53:21.751)
I like when we start to dissect our thinking around disease, this disease model we've been raised in, we have to start questioning our own belief system. We were raised in the allopathic model of health care, you go to your MD, they, as a kid, shoot you up with pharmaceuticals, send you home, give you drugs, whatever, and you get lab work and you're either normal or abnormal.
That's what they're looking at—parameters. If you're feeling sick, but you're not sick enough to get a drug, then they have nothing for you. They look for these parameters. Once your symptomology and lab work fall into certain parameters, then they can give you a label and say you have this disease.
But this is a human construct. It's a mindset and it is not real. One doctor once said, “Give me a barrel full of arthritis, show me ADHD, give me a barrel full of ADHD.” It's not oranges or apples or bananas. It's a construct where we decide on certain parameters.
Interestingly enough, in Hawaii, there was no mental illness before settlers came. They kept somewhat of a history, and there was no history of mental illness. So this concept of deciding—I don't know if the settlers caused the mental illness or just that it wasn't recognized. If you don't have a name for it, if you don't have a box, you're just “my cousin's a little weird, but we love them.” There's no box you put someone in.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (0:55:20.963)
That's a lot of indigenous areas like that too. As much as I'm a genetic specialist here, our genetics have not changed much over the past hundred thousand years. So the real cause of the increase in chronic illnesses—it's not due to genetics. It's due to the toxic world. But people think you can't control your genetics. Well, you can't control what you got. You can figure out what the weak points are.
Let me ask you this question. Let's use heavy metals, for example. No right or wrong answer, do you think the people that get the sickest from heavy metals, they have the worst heavy metal issues—do you think they actually consume that much orders of magnitude higher levels of these metals or do you think their cells have genetic mutations that hardwire their cells to absorb extra metals or not clear it as well?
Ashley James (0:56:20.831)
I wouldn't presume to know why. But being someone who was poisoned by heavy metals in my past, I didn't. So I would say, yes, I believe that people who are the sickest from heavy metals—they didn't necessarily take in more heavy metals than other people. I think that there's something going on with their—possibly, if we look at genetics, epigenetics—how their detox pathways? What's their toxic load to begin with? What's their liver dealing with? What's their nutrient deficiencies look like? Because if the liver doesn't have the raw building blocks to process.
I think it's more than just that. But I think that's one really interesting point. Is someone’s genetics—so that cells will take in more heavy metals than other people's cells? Because I've seen this with other families.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (0:57:16.144)
Well, we know that. We know that to be the case. Yes, I've worked with a lot of families, and there's a family of five living in a moldy house. Two of them are beyond sick. The other three have basically no issues. So please explain to me—well, not you literally, just rhetorically here—all you people out there, please explain to me then. It's not just the dosage of the exposure.
Of course, if there were no heavy metals in existence, no one would get heavy metal issues. Yes, there are absolutely people who take some things out of context. So, absolutely. Of course, there are people that consume a crap ton of heavy metals. They eat a crap ton of tuna their whole life. A lot of soup. You know what I mean? Of course, that's a factor, but we don't have the data to answer that question fully.
But I mean, I'm biased here, of course, but I think it's at least 51% genetic—so, genetic versus exposure level. Even when people talk about nutrient deficiencies—every nutrient vitamin gets absorbed through a certain protein made by a gene, metabolized by a certain protein or gene, transported by a certain protein or gene. So all of these things that people—I'm not saying you here, we're on the same page—but people think it's genetics or environment or nutrient deficiencies.
Nutrient deficiencies on one end, of course, you're not consuming enough on paper—meaning, throwing out a number here—if the magnesium daily requirement is a thousand milligrams (it's not even true, but just for argument's sake), and you only consume 200 milligrams per day, yes, that's a lifestyle nutrient deficiency.
But if you consume a thousand milligrams and you have genetic mutations in how you absorb magnesium, you don't need a thousand milligrams—you need significantly more than that. So that's two ends of a nutrient deficiency. It's what you're actually putting into your body, into your pie hole, versus what is actually being absorbed.
There's a big disconnect there between those two. Every one of us has a disconnect there. It just depends how dramatic it is. Everyone has millions of mutations. It depends where they stacked up. Do you have a higher number of more moderate roadblocks in your genome? Do you have a handful of ones where there's so many mutations on that single gene?
Because here's the thing—mutations synergize together. So people talk about the MTHFR gene. Well, if you only have one mutation, you live a pretty good life. Probably not going to matter. If you have two, three, four mutations there, that's barely working. So they stack on top of each other as well.
So it's not if we have the mutations. It's where they are stacked up and how dramatic is the deficit.
Ashley James (1:00:03.302)
Right before you started talking about that, I was going to say—my husband never gets sick. I’m the one that gets sick the most, which is crazy. My son gets sick moderately, but my husband never catches it.
Once in a blue moon—once in a crazy five years—my husband will get sick and the two of us don’t. We’re looking at him like, we didn’t catch it.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:00:29.108)
That's literally my dad. That describes my family dynamic with my dad. What’s your husband done for work throughout the years?
Ashley James (1:00:38.444)
He was a carpenter. He installed acoustical ceilings, and he was exposed to—we actually wonder—he must have amazing genetics for clearing chemicals, clearing toxins. He worked in buildings that were off-gassing. They were newly built buildings with no circulation yet. He was just breathing in all the toxins for 20 years and never got sick.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:01:03.980)
Well, here's the thing. What do I hear? Guess what? My dad's been a general contractor his whole life building houses. So you see the connections here. My brain works off pattern, so I love hearing this now.
I mean, random download I had just now—being exposed to these toxins and things and environmental things and germs earlier in life—could you epigenetically be upregulating your detox machinery throughout the rest of your life? Really, really good question here.
We know that children that get dirtier when they're younger—let your kids eat dirt so they have a better immune system—I think that could also apply to if you're working in a cubicle in a financial office your whole life and you're just sheltered from everything versus being out in the elements around a lot of different types of people. Just dots I'm seeing and connecting.
Ashley James (1:01:54.256)
I don't know if this is connected. He grew up swimming in Green Lake here in Seattle, which—microbes everywhere—just swimming among the microbes. As a kid, he developed some kind of fungal ear infection, got rid of it, it's gone.
His doctor figured this out. It turned on something in his body where his body overproduces earwax for the rest of his life. Apparently, there's a thing where if you were a kid and you get lake water in your ear, your body will go, we're just going to overproduce earwax the rest of your life.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:02:32.103)
Well, that just proves what I just said then. That literally, yes. I mean, I would think that the earwax is just a visual clue to see that. But you don't know what the inner workings inside of each cell are.
So let me put it this way. In order for him to be producing more earwax, his cells have to epigenetically change what genes they're expressing. They're expressing more of the genes that make earwax. They're doing that throughout his whole life.
So what other stuff are they ramping up as well, even though that lake water is no longer there? In my mind, great evidence there. I function a lot by reading between the lines because when you do the stuff that I do, there aren't studies to test these things.
I mean, think about it. Clinical trial—everyone gets the same drug. How could I run trials to see how well my workflow works if each person gets something different?
Ashley James (1:03:33.709)
I hold hope for the future that we will one day have individualized medicines based on our genetics. Man, that's what I want to see. Because I think it's like bloodletting. “Let's give everyone this one drug.”
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:03:55.394)
Yes. Working on it. Yes.
Pharmacists want to make money. They try to pick people for the studies who will just squeak out statistical significance. Then they want to pump out one drug because it's easier to make just one drug—more profits—and give that to everyone with the same label, which, as we know, is just a random clusterfuck of different symptoms and boxes to be checked.
That's the goal—to find the one thing they could mass produce and help everyone, maybe a little bit. I'm on the opposite end. I focus on the individual right in front of me. I don't care if you show me data that this supplement can help with anxiety. I'm seeing with people that I work with in front of me that quercetin or rhodiola rosea makes people more anxious. But Tyler, rhodiola rosea has clinical trials that it helps with anxiety. Well, there were 10 people in it.
B, we're all different. So when there is no evidence to support exactly what you're doing, you need to work off indirect pieces of evidence. I could show you rabbit holes of dozens of pieces of indirect evidence for every single thing I think and practice in my practice. But again, no one's studying to see. No one's studying these things because there's no financial incentive to do that.
I left the bench of doing the lab experiments and the lab code and everything because they don't really fund science where pardon my French people just experiment to find out. It's always, what is the clear monetary gain or benefit from doing this research? Then we'll do it. It's not exploratory. That's why I did the PhD and that's why I left the bench where you do the actual lab experiments—because it's not creative like that. You're so in a box.
Ashley James (1:05:50.787)
So I'm going to go to the opposite. Because we're so individualized and because you can't say this supplement is good for 100% of people, what in your experience is good for 100% of people? You can go talk about food. What’s your favorite?
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:06:14.848)
What experience? You mean what food or supplement?
Ashley James (1:06:17.138)
Yes, I know there could be thousands of things, but what’s your favorite? One hundred percent of people benefit from wild blueberries, or benefit from bananas, or benefit from vitamin C. What’s your one hundred percent of people?
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:06:30.950)
Gotcha. Yes, I would reword that into some things I think are lowest risk across the board. I think magnesium is a great supplement for people to try. I say it’s low risk, meaning, for example, magnesium is a mineral everyone could do great with.
Magnesium often comes with magnesium stearate or stearic acid, which lubricate the pills of a lot of supplements. If magnesium stearate technically it’s in there, a small number of people respond negatively. So you see how with any supplement I could find a reason. Fish oil—I think that’s generally safe for most people to experiment with. However, fish are high in something called amines. Amines look very similar to histamine.
People who are histamine sensitive—I’ve worked with people their headaches, bloating, and skin issues go away when we get them off fish oil and onto a vegan algae-based omega-3. So you see how it is. That being said, I would list those two as fairly safe supplements to experiment with, but for literally everything, Ashley, there is a potential risk for every single supplement. There is no universally safe ones but there are ones that you get side effects like a little headache, and then you get over it. That to me is very, very low risk.
I think vitamin D is another one as well. I think vitamin D is one of the most wrongly demonized supplements. A lot of people cannot get optimal vitamin D levels based on their genetics. They need targeted supplementation. Now, that’s not everybody, but I think everyone should experiment with taking a few thousand IUs of vitamin D with a little bit of K2, maybe some magnesium and boron, and just see how they feel supporting that system for a few months.
You could experiment a bit. Those are three that I think are fairly safe across the board, but I also listed some of the potential risks in any supplement you mentioned. It does a thing. Back to the mechanisms—it does a thing. Well, in any human being, doing more of that thing by taking that supplement—maybe their body’s already doing enough of that thing, and now you’re overdoing that thing. So that can be applied to literally any nutrient.
Ashley James (1:08:52.975)
I have had several clients who, no matter what, cannot get their B12 up. They have to go for injections. They can’t, no matter what they do with their gut health, with vitamins, or different brands of vitamins, they literally have to go get it injected in order to raise their B12 levels.
I’m so fascinated to know what happened. What happened to us as a species that some people just have dismally low B12 no matter what they do? What’s going on at that cellular level, or that genetic level, that receptor level? What’s going on?
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:09:36.251)
Yes, I mean genetically, what’s the journey of B12, you ingest it. It needs to get taken up in your gut and your intestines. That’s the FUT2 gene that can be mutated, so you don’t absorb it in the gut as well.
Ashley James (1:09:55.993)
Now that wasn't a swear word. You were saying the F-U-
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:09:58.669)
FUT2. Yes. So those individuals have poor gut absorption of B12, and studies have shown people with that mutation have lower B12 levels.
Well, once it's in the gut cell, how does it get throughout your body? It takes a taxi. The TCN1 or TCN2 genes are what shuttle vitamin B12 throughout your body and deliver it into your cells. Those can be mutated as well. That’s not only linked to lower B12 levels, it's also linked to chronic fatigue and chronic frailty syndrome. Of course, why wouldn’t it, when your cells are hardwired throughout your whole life to not get B12 into your cells?
Here’s the thing: blood work is also misleading because it measures what's in the blood, not what's inside of your cells. So, for example, lithium is a metal found on the earth. It's found in our bodies. Lithium promotes the transport of B12 into your cells. I’ve worked with some people—I’ll add some lithium in, and their B12 levels go down in their blood, but they feel a lot better.
Well, the levels went down because now it's in your cells, where it really matters. Some people that don’t respond much to B vitamins, you add a little bit of lithium orotate—which is my favorite supplement of all time, by the way—we could touch more on that in a moment, why I love it so much. But one of the many mechanisms why it can be beneficial is that it helps get those B vitamins in so you can do that methylation process.
So yes, we’ll stop there with the genetic side. But you see how—what if someone has multiple FUT2 mutations plus multiple TCN2 mutations? You see how these can stack up together. Not everyone has highly mutated of all of these. It does depend on the person.
Then, on the other end, the more functional medicine side is gut integrity. Is the gut lining inflamed? Is there enough mucosal production in the cells?
I guess indirectly, genetics affects it. But if you have a gut infection going on, you're not going to be absorbing things as well. So then there's the gut health versus the genetics. Multiple of those—they all intertwined together. It does just depend on the person.
Ashley James (1:12:24.890)
To add to that, I interviewed two people from the Viome company. I had it tested—it's fascinating. Viome tests over 100,000 gene expressions of your microbiome. Our microbiome changes over time, so this isn't like our genetics, where it's locked in.
If you're doing everything right and you're still feeling like crap, it's really interesting to look at even the microbiome gene expressions. Our microbiome is a pharmacy inside us. It's a six-pound pharmacy inside our gut that makes the chemicals that we absorb from our food. It helps break down our food. It helps us with our nutrients. It's fascinating.
I think we're just scratching the surface with genetics, with individualized medicine, and with understanding the microbiome and using the microbiome when it comes to supporting the body.
For example, there is this one particular strain—and I will remember the name of it—but it helps the body make GABA. It's supposed to be in our gut. When we take antibiotics and wipe out our whole microbiome, you might have been great your whole life, and then all of a sudden—why am I so anxious? It might be that you wiped out the microbiome that helps your body make enough of these neurochemicals and neurotransmitters.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:14:09.096)
Yes, neurotransmitters. Yes, to pump the brakes. Absolutely.
Ashley James (1:14:11.302)
Yes, there are so many different things to look at. It might not be your cells. It might be the cells of your microbiome that are affecting the pharmacology inside you.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:14:25.378)
Yes, absolutely. That's one of the limitations of genetic testing. People come to work with me, they have a lot of gut issues, and I'm awesome with them. Listen, I've helped a lot of people with a wide array of gut issues, whether it's Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, IBS, IBD. Just so you know, my job starts with your intestinal, your gut cells. This testing is not checking other bad stuff in the gut, but I've gotten improvements across the board for these things by addressing what the cells need.
Again, I didn’t say this yet, but low vitamin D is linked to all of these conditions—low vitamin D signaling. So it's not just vitamin D levels. How well are your cells sensing vitamin D? You sense vitamin D when vitamin D binds the vitamin D receptor on your DNA. That is mutated in virtually everyone I work with. Pretty much everyone here listening has mutations there, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. How many do you have?
I'm used to seeing anywhere from, I'd say, two to five mutations or so in that gene in everyone I work with. I think I've had literally one or two people that had none. So everyone has them more or less. But when someone comes in with ten mutations there, they've been living with symptoms of low vitamin D throughout their life, but they look normal on blood work. It's because that receptor can't sense what's in the blood as well.
So again, going back to the blood work stuff that you mentioned—it does not matter what your blood levels of a nutrient are. What matters is how your cells respond to the nutrients in your blood.
An example I like to give is—have you ever heard of catnip before? Catnip gets cats all hot and bothered, or wild, or high, or whatever. We don’t. Why don’t we respond to it? We lack the receptors for cells to sense catnip to relay that message—“Hey, there’s catnip here, let’s respond in some way.” So we don’t get high on it whatsoever.
You see how if someone has a receptor that doesn’t work as well genetically their whole life, it won’t be able to pick up or sense it as well.
Ironically, what animal does have those catnip receptors? Mosquitoes do. Catnip is an amazing mosquito repellent. Instead of getting high—well, maybe it makes them high. They don’t like the high or maybe they love the high, but they can’t fly straight because they’re [expletive]. I don’t really know from the mosquito’s point of view here.
But you see, this is what’s so fascinating to me. If you don’t have the receptor, your body will not respond to that thing—whether it’s serotonin, dopamine, vitamin D, melatonin. These are all receptors that are commonly mutated in people.
So you can see how it's reading between the lines here. We do know these vitamin D receptor mutations are linked to type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, poor metabolic health, and allergies.
So you see how we have the data that having one mutation in that vitamin D receptor is linked to type 1 diabetes or anxiety. What if you have ten?
Guess what? There are no studies done to date that check that many mutations in a gene. This is really important. I hope it's not too high level. Let me know if we go too high level here. The way medicine is practiced—we study clinical data—it's flawed. It is completely flawed.
Here’s the thing. Let’s just say, again, I mentioned one study says mutation number one in this vitamin D receptor is linked to a couple of diseases. Then another study says this other mutation on that gene is linked to issues. This other one too. But what if you have all three of them?
So if one mutation in this gene is linked to diseases, what if we did a study that have one versus ten? Do you see how this is dramatically, dramatically undervaluing the importance of genetics?
We don’t even study them the right way. Who cares if you have—I just told you now—everyone here, I would say 99.9% of people listening right now have at least one, two, three mutations in this vitamin D receptor. But that’s not the end of the world. We need to go deeper and study deeper. We need to analyze things deeper. That makes sense?
Let’s just say we’re trying to see if a certain supplement helps with depression. They give a hundred people the supplement. Then you map how they report how they feel—their happiness scores or whatever. There’ll be a wide range of people. Some people are through the roof. They respond so well. Other people don’t feel any better. Other people may feel worse.
Why is that?
If it was a clinical trial, we would say, no, nix that. We're not putting that in the pipeline. Let's move on to something else. I look at that and see—well, out of the hundred people, you have a bunch of dots on a data graph. Around twenty of them responded very well. Why is that?
I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume the people that respond most to a supplement that raises serotonin probably have more serotonin issues—whether it's genetic or inflammation or whatever it may be.
So we’re trying to gauge—all those dots on that graph are supposed to be biological replicates.
When I was doing my PhD, I would have a plate of cells. I would do an experiment, and I have my plate of cells. I would pick them up, put some into another dish for an experiment. I would keep growing them. Then a couple of days later, they’d be ready again. I would do the experiment again. But do you see how it’s the same exact group of cells I’m doing the experiment on? So it’s the same genetics.
That's not the case with humans. Mice—I did mouse work for my PhD. I found I was allergic to mice at the end. That's why I felt like crap.
Yes, we could maybe touch on that. But they are from the same litter. They're brothers and sisters, and they're inbred a lot of the time. So you see how we're so much more genetically different.
So when you have these evidence-based people saying, “Show me the randomized human control trial,” we're testing a massive, mixed group of people.
If we were trying to see if a vitamin D supplement helps with a disease, I would want to get the people that have the most vitamin D mutations and then run the trial. I am very confident—I believe the results would be astounding. Because we're giving vitamin D to the people that actually need it the most.
Ashley James (1:21:38.971)
Are there cases where they're deficient? They have these mutations, they're deficient, but you increase it and it just stays higher in the blood, but it still doesn't get into the cell enough?
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:21:55.177)
Yes. So that is another gene—another shuttle taxi that can do that. That is linked to all of it, whether it's making it in your skin from sunlight, whether it's transporting it throughout your body, whether it's activating it, whether it's your cells sensing it, or whether it's breaking it down. These are all different genes that are mutated. This is what we call a pathway.
So if you have a lot of mutations in multiple steps here, that's when I'm like, boy, do you just need more vitamin D? Do you need a special form of vitamin D? These are all the questions that need to be asked.
The best we can do is supply more of it. I've had clients who go back to their regular doctor, and their levels are—I'm not saying this is a recommendation for everyone, by the way—they have a lot of mutations. I want them to go up to 90, sometimes 100, the very high end of normal for vitamin D.
Again, this is not a blanket recommendation. But they do that. They go to their allopathic doctor, and the doctor says, that's too high, lower it. Which is hypocritical. If the range is 30 to 100, and you're at 35, the doctor says you're fine. But if you're at 95, they say you're too high. So they don't care if you're five above the low, but they care if you're five below the high, which to me doesn't make much sense. First off.
Second off. They tell their doctor, well, I'm finally feeling better. My allergies went away. Or this got better. That got better. My eczema went away. Because for the first time in my life, my cells now are sensing enough vitamin D. There was always enough in the blood. But remember, the cells don't respond as well to it. They're not as sensitive. So what else are we going to do here?
People may say, don't take that much vitamin D. You're going to get calcium issues. Why would you get calcium issues if you're not sensitive? You're not getting calcium issues because there's more vitamin D in your blood. You're getting calcium issues if your cells are responding. They're overstimulated by the vitamin D. But you see how that depends on how sensitive your cells are to it.
This is why, of course, I use blood work in my practice. I cross-reference it, and I believe in it, of course. These receptor mutations completely throw a wrench in the blood work. That's why people's blood work looks normal. They feel like crap because their cells need different amounts of these nutrients to feel like things are okay.
Ashley James (1:24:31.253)
This reminds me of the allopathic versus naturopathic example of the disease model. So the MD, is looking at the body as in, I need you to be sick enough to give you a drug. I know I'm simplifying things, but this is really how it feels. I've had several experiences with MDs and also with clients' experiences where they'll say, “You just need to drink milk.” They'll just say something really ludicrous.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:25:07.326)
Their ego prevents them from saying, “I don't know.” It drives me insane. When I first started doing this with clients, I kept getting these compliments of, “I love how you tell me when you don't know something.” I was like, huh? What’s the alternative here? But I get it exactly. It’s a breath of fresh air.
Listen, I can't sit here and promise you or guarantee you I’m going to cure you of everything. I will never do that for someone. I can guarantee you’ll never find information like this anywhere else. I can guarantee you this will change the way you look at food, supplements, et cetera. But back to what you were saying there.
Ashley James (1:25:56.808)
I learned this years ago and it just boggles my mind. This is one example that's similar to what you're talking about. Calcium is just one of the 60 major minerals we need—it is up there, but it’s not the most important in terms of enzymatic processes. My understanding is magnesium is used more in the body than calcium enzymatic processes need both, but they’re all very important.
Let’s say you’re deficient in minerals, and one of those minerals is calcium. Our soft tissue needs it. Our bones are the bank that stores it. If you didn’t have enough minerals, your heart wouldn’t beat, your neurons wouldn’t work, your muscles wouldn’t work. We would just die. So thank God for minerals.
Here we are, chronically deficient in calcium for whatever reason. It could be absorption issues. Maybe they are drinking dairy. I will not get on my soapbox today about dairy, but I just have to say, question any food that requires money to market to you. If there were marketing campaigns saying, “It does a body good,” “It’s so good for you,” “Good source of this,” and they had to pay money to make you drink it or eat it, then you really need to start questioning things.
That’s all I’m going to say about that. So, for someone who’s deficient in minerals, calcium for a long time, the body will ask the bones to release some into the soft tissue. This is the parathyroid gland, the nice little gland by the thyroid in the throat. It will say, “Hey bones, can you help? We need it. We were depositing minerals when we were younger, but now we have to do some withdrawals from the mineral bank. We need to withdraw some minerals.”
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:27:50.214)
They're bringing vitamin D into the chat as well. Those three are very, very tightly regulated.
Ashley James (1:27:55.290)
In blood work, what we'll show is calcium is high. So the doctor will say, “Your calcium's really high,” or “Your parathyroid hormones are really high.” Maybe this person eventually develops a kidney stone or some soft tissue calcification. The MD will say the stupidest thing in the world—they will say, “You should stop eating things with calcium. You should stop taking a mineral supplement. You have too much in your blood.”
That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard maybe they were taking a really bad version of calcium, like some Centrum Silver or whatever the body doesn't even absorb. But the problem in the first place is that calcium is high in the blood, but it's actually overall low in the tissue. The reason it’s high in the blood is that they’re deficient in it, and the body has been withdrawing from the skeleton to try to bring it to balance.
Just looking at a snapshot of blood work and saying you should stop doing something really healthy for you—stop eating leafy greens or something because it’s high in the blood—that is the wrong interpretation. MDs and NDs, naturopaths, have very different views on this. MDs will put you on some drug that suppresses the parathyroid and give you some bone evacs or Fosamax or whatever injections to further prevent osteoporosis.
All the while, none of that is actually helping the person come back into balance or helping the nutrition get into the cells. When you said that about vitamin D—that it can be high in the blood but the cells are starving—another example is blood sugar dysregulation. People more commonly understand that if the receptors on the cells for insulin have insulin resistance, they could have good amounts of insulin or even high insulin and high blood sugar.
The houses inside their body, those little cells, are starving. They're empty. They're desperate for the blood sugar to come in. It’s going to be high in the blood but low in the cell. I just wonder how many examples of this are happening in our bodies every day where our blood work could seemingly look okay, but we feel crap because it’s not getting into the cell.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:30:29.609)
No, absolutely. This is why a lot of functional medicine practitioners will use things like an OAT test or intracellular nutrient testing. I'm a big fan of that because it's measuring what's actually inside the cells, not what's just on the highway—in the bloodstream—going there.
Ashley James (1:30:49.145)
How accurate are those labs, and how do they do it? Do they take a biopsy? How do they do intracellular?
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:31:01.017)
So it's a blood draw, and usually they get it either from red blood cells or immune cells within the blood. Then they bust those open. They clean and isolate them from the blood solution, so you're not getting any other readings from other things. You bust them open, you read how much is in there. I do think they're highly accurate, and I'm saying that from the angle of utilizing this with clients and seeing—oh, we got this, this, that going on, and we address that, and they feel better.
So from my point of view, it seems quite accurate.
Also, this is why when you run more blood markers, people that are really talented in blood chemistry—especially in the holistic space—they're not just using just that LDL marker for your overall cardiovascular heart risk. They're not just using the blood calcium. They're not just using iron levels for overall anemia risk. This is why getting proper panels to cross-reference but some of these markers may not be, “clinically verified”. So an MD won't touch it because it's woo-woo. It's quackery. I mean, sometimes it's just quackery. But all the major advancements in science started out by being called quacks.
I mean, Isaac Newton was considered a quack for the heliocentric model—that we revolve around the sun. I know that I'm on the right path when I'm getting more and more people saying, “This is quackery. This is BS.” And I'm like, yes, that means I'm doing something right here.
Ashley James (1:32:32.418)
The doctors that insisted we should wash our hands before surgery actually got pushback. It's ridiculous. Bloodletting. Maybe we shouldn't cut people open and bleed them.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:32:54.130)
Well, bloodletting actually has a lot of benefits if you do it the right way. Some countries still do that. They'll put a little hole in the forehead and drain blood. I get what you're saying. Ancient times—they were not replacing the right thing. I get what you're saying.
Ashley James (1:33:11.272)
Everyone, that was their thing. We have to drain the humors from people, and leeches and bloodletting was the thing everyone had. It's like, okay, so maybe there are certain people where it stimulates something in the body to do that, but it's not across-the-board like everyone should do this.
You're taking this beautiful individualized approach and looking at the symphony, the very incredibly complex symphony in the body.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:33:40.753)
I'll just stop you there quickly. I was going to talk about it later. I have a free cell signaling model for disease courses. And literally, I say, I'm not going to give spoilers, but it ends up saying how we are a symphony within a symphony. So I use that same wording.
So the fact that we're synced up like that—I love it.
Ashley James (1:34:04.559)
So cool. I can't wait to take your free course. We'll make sure the link is in the show notes of the podcast as well. That's really cool. Yes, this is exactly what we need, but we’ve got to get all the other pieces of the pie on board.
I like the analogy that we've been raised to think that MDs, drug-based allopathic medicine, is the only doctor you go to. Everything else is this weird “alternative” thing. This one naturopath that I'm going to quote says that would be like saying golden retrievers are the only dog and every other dog is an alternative dog. This is ridiculous, but this is how they marketed it on purpose. It's all by design.
A little bit over 100 years ago, we had more of an even playing field and they actually got better results in certain cases—proven, documented. You could go to a homeopath, you could go to an herbalist. You could go to different styles of medicine.
Of course, I love that we have advancements in science, but at the same time, the advancements in science are largely driven by profits. It's a profit-driven industry, not a for-health industry. That's why we're here, listening to this, learning from you. I'd love to get all the other industries on board to think more like the way you're thinking, which just seems so obvious. Why aren't we listening to the body as an individual?
I love that you brought up that we can test what's inside the cell. The only test that I've used personally is the magnesium RBC test, which you had mentioned. It's far more accurate than what's in your bloodstream, what's in the plasma. When the lab can pop open a red blood cell and say, “Well, let's see what's actually inside your cell,” in terms of your nutrient levels.
I'd be interested to see how that evolves in the future, how that type of testing evolves. You had mentioned lithium orotate being one of your favorite nutrients.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:36:19.570)
It’s the number one currently
Ashley James (1:36:21.662)
I am excited to hear why.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:36:23.460)
Have you tried it before?
Ashley James (1:36:24.405)
I have. I've dabbled with it. It's wonderful. I find it fascinating that the drug companies take lithium and then they have to, of course, add some of their own chemicals to it to patent it and give that to people for a variety of–
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:36:41.635)
Yes, schizophrenia, bipolar, yes. So that's lithium bicarbonate. I utilize lithium orotate quite often in my practice, and a lot of times I get some eyebrows. “What are you giving me, doc?”
Lithium bicarbonate needs to be used at very high doses. It's not absorbed very well, and there are side effects associated with it since you need to take so much of it. Lithium is in the earth. It's in our bodies. It's in our drinking water.
I don't know if you've heard about these studies—if not, this is going to blow your mind. Every city has different levels of lithium in the drinking water. It's found in spring water. Cities or counties with higher levels of lithium, this is globally—the higher the community’s level of lithium in the drinking water, the lower the rate of violent crimes, suicides, depression. So it just goes to show there's a strong correlation here.
They also showed that violent criminals that were arrested have lower levels of lithium in their scalp. It's really an incredible thing. People think of lithium bicarbonate—“That's the bipolar depression drug. What are you putting me on?” Well, lithium is already in all of our bodies right now.
Lithium orotate is an over-the-counter form. It's absorbed much easier at a much, much lower dose. So much, much lower side effects. They sell up to 20 milligram capsules of lithium orotate. I think people do, I could be wrong here—around a thousand milligrams of lithium bicarbonate. So, 50-fold difference here.
I first tried lithium when I was going through a lot of stress. I was waking up out of bed panicked every morning—just overworked. I took five milligrams of lithium at night. I slept like a log. I woke up the next morning—and this was again a period where I was more stressed than usual. I'm prone to stress, but this was a low-ish point—or highest point—stress-wise for me. I was building some things, X, Y, Z.
It was literally from the heavens. I just had this intense feeling of serenity. I actually didn’t even get that much work done that day. I was dancing around my house like, “Life is great! What was I stressed about—this or that?” That was my first experience. It was truly life-changing for me.
Now I recommend people experiment. I’ll add lithium to that list. I think one milligram of lithium orotate is a very, very safe supplement that I do think everyone should try. Sometimes people don’t feel great on it, but it’s a very low dose. I start out with that level with people.
Let’s talk about some things that it does—the mechanisms—it helps lower arachidonic acid, a pro-inflammatory fatty acid in the body, in the brain. Those genes I told you that break down adrenaline—it helps speed them up. This is why it changed my life. I told you my genes are slower to begin with. This literally helps you break down adrenaline faster.
I'm a high-adrenaline guy. I have higher levels at all times due to my mutations. People that are very sensitive—they’re tense, uptight a lot of the time—this can be truly, truly life-changing.
It's neurogenic. It grows brain cells. It activates the BDNF gene. Well, guess what? I have a mutation there as well. What else raises BDNF in the brain? So you have lithium, you have sunlight, intense exercise, CBD, psychedelics. What are all the things I’ve discovered throughout my life that I respond very well to? Sunlight, exercise, lithium, CBD, psychedelics.
So you see how I was self-medicating my gene mutation before I realized I had that.
What else does it do? Let me think. It also binds and stimulates a specific serotonin receptor. Vitamin D only has one receptor it binds to. Serotonin can bind to one of seven different major receptors. The 1A receptor—it helps stimulate.
Those are just some examples there. It also helps transport B12 and folate inside our cells. So we just listed, what, five or six things that lithium does? If you need support in any of those, lithium can truly be really, really helpful for you.
But if you’re someone that has low adrenaline or someone that has a lot of chronic fatigue—and then going to go back to the data, the flaws with data—lithium has been shown to help with chronic fatigue in studies. So why do some people feel like they can't get out of bed if they take it?
For them, we don’t know exactly why, but the things lithium is doing in their cells—it's overdoing some of it. So if you have very low energy, sometimes lowering that adrenaline makes you more tired. That's why we start off on a low dose.
Yes, I refer to this as “nature’s Xanax.” I've seen it change the lives of so many people. I rarely go over five milligrams. It is a metal, so you do want to monitor if you take higher dosages. I never went over five milligrams personally. Would more feel better? Yes. But I’m always a big fan of the lowest effective dose.
I have a one milligram bottle and a five milligram bottle. I’ll use the one milligrams. I’ll pop them out—people pop Xanax, if that makes sense. I’ll go back down to zero, maybe one milligram, and then I’ll raise that dosage if I’m really overwhelmed. If I have a big talk to give, I’ll take two of them beforehand. It just smooths me out.
If you think of something like a Xanax or like lemon balm or theanine—these all activate the GABA system, which slows down the brain and stops the brain from releasing more adrenaline.
So imagine if you had a painting and you were anxious. All red is on the painting. What Xanax does—it paints over it with blue. You're painting over the adrenaline. What lithium does—it just removes the red paint.
So, we’re taking all these calming things to mask our adrenaline, but rather than masking the adrenaline, why don’t we just help the body process the adrenaline in the first place?
Ashley James (1:43:17.496)
And some people have been living on adrenaline for so long.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:43:26.572)
That's why some people say, “I don't feel well.” I have to ask them, “Do you feel less stress?” They say, “Yes.” But when you've been living off that adrenaline, your high-functioning anxiety your entire life, people will say they feel high on it.
I just think you're not stressed for the first time. It's non-psychoactive. They get a little bit of a serotonin boost, better mood, less stress.
Ashley James (1:43:50.108)
But then the people who have been living on adrenaline—without adrenaline, they then associate that with, “Now I'm tired.” Actually the coffee and all the stimulants you were doing and the adrenaline, the self-medicating, was masking the fact that this is your normal. Below the adrenaline, this is your normal energy level. Now let's build you back up.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:44:17.384)
Now we exactly build back up from there. I'm very sensitive to caffeine. I probably have maybe 50 milligrams of caffeine per day. I used to slam seven cups of coffee, but now, since I have the right nutrients in place.
I use caffeine the vast majority of days. It's a very, very low dosage because I have my right B complex, or I'm taking some organ supplements, or I'm taking other things—and eating a good diet, of course, too. I'm a supplement guy, but food is medicine as well. I've always put good food into my body.
Yes, the lithium orotate is my number one favorite supplement outright for me right now. Whenever I travel, I have it. If I'm overwhelmed, I'll open up a capsule, mix it in some water quick. Within 10–20 minutes, I just feel more level-headed. It's not a sedating type of thing.
I do think that's something people could try out. It's over the counter. That's one. It's one-twentieth—it's 5%—of the max dose they sell over the counter.
Ashley James (1:45:26.686)
That one milligram?
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:45:28.022)
Yes, I'm saying versus the 20 milligrams they sell, but I've had people come to me from naturopaths on 50 milligrams. I'm like, what the [expletive] is going on here? Why are you relying on—again, this goes back to the symphony—why are you relying on one supplement with a mega dose?
I'm not a big mega dosing guy. I like more nutrients in moderate dosages catered to your body. It's not just about the supplement. It's about the right symphony or team of nutrients in your body.
I've worked with people that say lithium didn't do anything for them. We added it into their personalized protocol, and then they're like, “I feel amazing.” And I’m like, “Okay, now go ahead. You feel great right now. Remove the lithium for a few days.” They're like, “Wow, I actually feel worse now. I didn't notice solo lithium making me feel better, but I'm noticing the absence of lithium along with this other good mixture of nutrients—I feel worse.”
So you see how it was—you need to have the right team in your body. I mean, I think with our toxic world today, our food is less nutritious, we're exposed to more toxins, and we deplete more micronutrients. I think everyone needs to be supplementing at least a few things for what their body needs to live an optimal life. Because our cells did not live to inhale glyphosate with every breath, to have this stress, to have this artificial light.
You can try to eat all organic all you want, but unless you're on an island all by yourself on the farmland—which sounds great, go for it—but unless you're doing all of that, going all in on that, you're exposed to the modern world today that eats away at our cellular health.
Ashley James (1:47:12.234)
So my mentor, Dr. Joel Wallach—I’ve had him on the show twice. I don’t know if you’ve looked into his stuff, but his story is really fascinating. He did a 12-year government-funded study, a $25 million federally funded study back in the sixties and seventies. They did over a million histopathologies and blood panels, human and animal autopsies. What he uncovered—at the time he was not a human doctor yet—he was a research scientist, a pathologist, and a large animal vet.
He uncovered—remember this is back in the sixties and seventies—but what he uncovered was that he mapped out 900 diseases that cross species lines and the nutrient deficiency associated with them. Every time someone died of an aortic aneurysm, whether it be an animal or a human, they all had copper deficiency. And he was like, that makes sense. Copper is needed to make collagen and elastin. If your body can’t make it, then this is the kind of thing that happens. This is the cascade effect.
What he discovered was that the brunt of nutrient deficiency that led to disease was mineral deficiency. He went on to see that and discovered that cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, and Down syndrome are nutrient deficiencies in utero. He mapped out what it was—zinc at conception for Down syndrome, and selenium (or selenium, however you want to say it), a nutrient deficiency during the development of the fetus. When we don’t have these certain nutrients, this is what happens.
He went over to China to a place called Kaishan, where in the rural areas kids were dying by the time they were 12. They all had this muscle-wasting disease. He also has a degree in soil agriculture, and he tested their soil.
It's an impoverished area where people basically are farmers and live off of their own land. Similar to—I'm not calling the Amish impoverished—but they are people who live off their own land because they either choose to or they need to. It's a closed circuit.
Even if we're eating at Walmart some of the time, I describe humans as trash pandas. We're just really ridiculously irresponsible when it comes to the food we eat and our food chain, just overall as humans.
We eat from wherever. At least we're not an animal in a cage. Animals in cages—like mice, which I want to make sure we talk about—with mice, you can starve them of a certain nutrient and then see what happens. Okay, we're going to remove copper, or remove lithium, or remove calcium from their feed and see what happens.
Whereas with humans, we have nutrient deficiencies, but we accidentally get certain nutrients just because we get food from different areas. But when we're a farmer living off our own land only, then whatever our soil is missing, we are also missing.
People often don't think that. They think I get my selenium from my Brazil nuts. And I'm like, how do you know there's selenium in the soil where the Brazil nuts grow? I can hydroponically grow plants. I can hydroponically grow spinach that has zero—literally zero—iron in it. But you think you're getting iron from spinach.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:50:04.148)
That's a really good point. Well said.
Ashley James (1:50:35.127)
So anyways, Dr. Wallach—what he discovered was that muscular dystrophy was a selenium deficiency in the soil. They were able to help that community by supplementing selenium. But the point is that there are 900 diseases, and they're all nutrient deficiencies. Most of them are mineral deficiencies.
You're talking about lithium, and I love that we're changing the mindset. We have the mindset of a drug-based system. We have to shift to the mindset of: what is the body missing from nature? We get lithium—it's natural. We're going to get it from our water. You're going to get it from food because it's in the soil. We're supposed to have it in low, healthy doses. You're supposed to have it.
If you're deficient and you take it—stuff will start to work. People who aren't deficient in it and take it don’t necessarily have as big of a shift, which is what we talked about before. That’s why it’s worth experimenting.
Where do we start when it comes to experimenting? Where do we start? We don't know our own genetics, and we don't know our own epigenetics. We don't know our own load—whether it be viral load or heavy metal load. There are so many things.
We could have, in the past, taken for example, something like lithium and felt bad and then thought, “That's not good for me.” It might've been exactly what you needed, but it bumped up against going through different pathways. It might've bumped up against something else.
You're the expert, I'm not, when it comes to this. But it might've smoked out a problem, and we didn't know how to interpret the symptoms we experienced.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:52:24.340)
What you said before—off the top of my head—muscular dystrophy and Down syndrome, these are genetic disorders. These are genetic mutations. Muscular dystrophy is a genetic mutation. Down syndrome is—you copy and paste a whole extra chromosome. So it's not just one gene. Instead of having one from mom and one from dad, you have three in total.
When you think about it, our DNA—when our cells grow and replicate—you have to copy and paste the DNA into two cells. You need to replicate the DNA. Sometimes, you mess up replicating it and put the wrong thing there. That's a mutation.
Zinc and selenium both dictate how well our body can repair broken DNA. This is also why these things can be linked to cancer as well, because that's when cancer starts to form—when you get a new mutation once you're already born, and you get a new mutation throughout your life. That's the beginning of cancer. It's your body's job to make sure you either fix that DNA in that cell or, if you can't, you tell that cell to commit suicide—apoptosis. Kill itself. We don't even want that anymore.
So, you are saying that—Maya and I hear that—I'm like, yes. That checks out. What's really interesting to me is: why would one mineral skew toward one genetic disorder versus another? That's what's really fascinating. What is it about selenium? I forgot if you said it was Down syndrome—or I think you said zinc was Down syndrome.
Ashley James (1:54:01.111)
Yes, Down syndrome is zinc, and then muscular dystrophy is selenium. But why would some people not develop that problem, and why would some people develop muscular dystrophy and–
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:54:12.247)
Well, what I would say is the DNA repair that's done by proteins made by genes. So, what is an example of a DNA repair gene? BRCA1 and 2. Have you ever heard of those before?
Ashley James (1:54:25.089)
Yes. The breast cancer?
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:54:26.425)
Exactly. You see how they're linked to breast and ovarian cancer because why are those mutations linked to just those cancers, not Down syndrome?
We have a good idea. We can visualize it. Different fields of discipline, different minds converge and agree, but there's still so much we don't know about the fine, fine details.
Let me put it this way—elephants have a lot more cells than we do. Why don't they really get cancer? It turns out their P53 gene, their DNA repair gene, is extra active.
You see how a lot of this comes down to how well you repair the breaks in your DNA that are happening all the time. You get sunburned, UV radiation damages the DNA. If your cells can't fix it, you're more prone to skin cancer.
You see how these issues, these genetic issues, they're stemming from—it’s not so much that a mutation happens. That’s going to happen regardless. It’s how well you can actually repair that. So the worker that repairs it, the repair man or woman—if that worker is hardwired to only work a four-hour shift, that would be a genetic mutation or does that worker not eat breakfast or lunch, only eats dinner, so works very slowly? That would be a mineral deficiency.
You see how there are different flavors of this, just this ever-splitting up, ever-fractionating what-ifs and flavors. I just think of the infinite flavors of everything.
That’s when people try to say, “You want to change your anxiety? Take a magnesium,” or “You want to do this? Do that.” It just drives me insane because it’s just a marketing ploy.
That being said, I do think it’s not that anyone who promotes magnesium is trying to mislead people. Magnesium deficiencies are very common. Maybe that wasn’t the best example. You get what I’m saying.
Ashley James (1:56:28.837)
Well, just the thing is it can’t be cookie-cutter for everyone, but it’s relatively harmless to suggest someone try magnesium if they have anxiety. To say it is the cure-all is deceptive because it’s not.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:56:44.086)
Yes. But, again, even if you, and the thing is too, you mentioned how do we learn to experiment? That’s literally what I’m trying to teach people—pathway by pathway. We’ll get more information about that. My philosophy is you don’t have to know your genetics to experiment. You need to know the pharmacology of the supplements. That’s what I’m on a mission to educate people about.
As long as you know here are the top five things this supplement does and what you may feel if you’re not responding well, go and have a field day with it. If you start taking supplements completely uninformed, you’re going in blind. You may take them for a week, not feel good, forget you started new supplements, and think you’re dying or have cancer or Alzheimer’s. I’ve had people come to me and say that when they were on the wrong supplements for them.
That’s why when I took a specially modified curcumin supplement, I had panic attacks for two days. I could not sleep. An hour and a half after I took that supplement, I knew it was too powerful. Don’t get me wrong—it sucked the next two days, but I knew what was going on. If someone went through what I went through, they would have gone to the hospital 1000%. That’s how horrible I felt.
This curcumin supplement I’m talking about is called Long Vita Curcumin. What’s it marketed as in the bottle? It’s specifically for the brain. It’s a hundred times more absorbed to the brain. I’ve taken regular curcumin before and I felt good on it because it raises serotonin, dopamine–it raises them! I felt a little bit of a boost. I tried this regular dosage, and within an hour and a half, I was doing horribly—my heart was racing.
What does that mean? Yes, you got so much more to your brain. You got a hundred times the anti-inflammatory effects. You also got a hundred times more adrenaline-raising effects. You can’t pick and choose which mechanisms you increase. It’s all or nothing. I forgot how we even got on that topic.
Ashley James (1:58:55.391)
No, I have a very similar experience, but years ago. I hate that we're telling—not hate—but we're telling these horror stories.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (1:59:02.114)
Well, it's important because people don't talk about this. They don't. It's like how people love talking about the VAERS, the adverse reactions to vaccines, how they under-report this or that. Not to go into that topic, but just drawing the parallels here. Where is the supplement-related injury type thing?
I'm not going to sit here and say, like we alluded to earlier, I'm not saying the wrong handful of supplements is killing millions of people. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that.
But again, it's not innocent. But also, how do we really know long, long term? Someone dies of a certain thing, how do we know that something they took their whole life didn't do that? I'm not ruling it out. But yes, what I'm saying is I've seen it dramatically reduce people's quality of life for long periods of time.
For years they're taking these supplements and they're going to doctors. No one thinks it's the supplements because people don't think supplements can be that powerful.
Ashley James (2:00:06.671)
Yes. On the other hand, I've seen the right supplements for the right person be absolutely game-changing, life-changing.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:00:15.477)
Absolutely life-changing. It beats the hell out of medications. I've gotten so many people off of the random mood meds onto the right things. They're like, I wish I had a time machine.
Ashley James (2:00:25.613)
It's so much fun—helping someone get so healthy they get off their meds. That's my number one goal.
I've actually had one client—it’s so hilarious. I've worked with clients for 13 years doing this health coaching. And I have one client who, when we first started working together, I discovered that her goal was not to get so healthy she got off her meds. I was like, okay, what is your goal? Because I have to hold back now, since my goal is to get you so healthy you don't need your meds anymore.
But pretty much everyone that comes to me—and my understanding is, comes to you—is that they want to get so healthy they don't need meds. Meds are a crutch. But I think we have to pull the wool out from our eyes and not think black and white about supplements. You wouldn't think black and white about—well, we have to be pragmatic. Don't think black and white about drugs or any tool you're going to use.
I think we need to understand the nuances. We have to understand the beautiful, complex symphony of individuality of each of our bodies and go into it knowing—do that test. Try one milligram, see how you feel. Do a test. And if you don't feel good, it doesn't necessarily mean—it could mean that wasn't a great quality. It could have been a complex, and something in that complex isn't great for you.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:01:47.349)
Don't get me started. I hate complexes. I hate complexes.
Ashley James (2:01:52.355)
We just don't know. You just don't know what it was, but because it's the Wild West, we don't know about the quality of the supplement. We also don't know about your own individual pathways.
So don't be afraid to never try. Just walk, tread with observation and caution, but be willing to dive in and really give it a go.
I have a family member, and they have essential tremors. They've had it for less than 10 years. It's been ruled out that it's not— they can't find the cause. It's not Parkinson's. It's not anything. They can't find the cause.
Every drug they put them on has caused hallucinations and night walking. Really scary, because at one point, they might have walked outside their house in the middle of the night while sleeping. So that doesn't work for the person because they live alone.
What was recently just mentioned to them is, “Why don't you get on a low dose Gabapentin?” That triggered this idea in my head. I'm like, wait a second—could the problem be their GABA? Not enough GABA?
I understand that taking a GABA supplement doesn't necessarily get into the brain because not all of it gets into the brain. But I started going down that pathway, and I saw that there's B6 deficiency, which means you can't convert enough of that glutamate to GABA. There are all these fun things.
That's when I discovered that it's Lactobacillus plantarum—one of the strains that can be wiped out when you've taken antibiotics, which this person has—and that strain helps us make GABA. So through proper supplementation, through proper experimenting of supplementation and food and lifestyle, could they correct that part of the brain if not enough GABA is the cause?
They didn't have this their whole life. It was just the last 10 years. Just interesting, because I thought maybe they took the antibiotics, it wiped out the gut, and then that affected so many other things—but affected their brain's ability to have enough GABA.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:04:14.161)
Yes, and you mentioned that B6 is for the glutamate to GABA conversion. Who's using the B6 to do that? That's the lunch for the worker. That's the GAD1 gene.
I am not a fan of direct GABA supplementation. You mentioned it gets to the brain very well, which… technically, it can bind enteric neurons in the gut. Because if you think about it—how does the GABA made from the bacteria do anything? But it can bind receptors on the gut neurons that go to the brain.
People take GABA. Some of it gets to the brain. It helps them. They turn it into glutamate. Glutamate revs this up. GABA calms this down. So we take the GABA, it helps a little bit, then you wake up in the middle of the night anxious because it turned into glutamate. But now, if you're someone that can't turn the glutamate back into GABA as well, you see it's not a one-to-one exchange.
The fact that this is not a lifelong thing doesn't mean it's solely a genetic thing. What I like to tell people too is, when I work with people that say, “The last couple of months” or “The last few years, I really haven't been doing well.” Genetics—I'll get the question: “Well, these genetics have been this way since birth. Why is it just becoming an issue now?” It comes down to: over time, these things build up over time. Before you have Alzheimer's disease, you have headaches or cognitive decline. It snowballs over time.
I guess what I'm trying to say is we all have things that can be supported naturally, genetically. Point being, I work with a lot of people with actual clinical genetic disorders—A.S.H.L.1 mutations. These are actual “I go to the doctor and get a diagnosis”—severe intellectual disability. I work with children. That’s not the holistic genetics. That’s really hardcore—go to the genetic doctor, this random freak thing happened.
I work with them, and I can't target that. Not every gene is targetable. If your issue is you can't make enough vitamin D, we give you more vitamin D. Not every gene works that way. You can't just hack around it.
But if that person also has a lot of vitamin D mutations—that maybe I have—my point is we can control what we can control. I've had some Down syndrome clients. Obviously, I'm not deleting that third chromosome. I'm not going to be hacking that away.
But if they also have, let's say, MTHFR mutations. We can control what we can control genetically, nutrients-wise. So that's why you mentioned with the gut health and with the GABA—yes, that could be a factor. Maybe there are some other mutations involved. Are they the elephant in the room that made them like that?
I don't like to think in terms of “What is the cause?” I like to think of “What is a contributor?” and let's address as many contributors as we can.
At least when you're in my line of work, where I don't look at the BRCA mutations, I don't look at the one-in-ten-million mutations that are severe developmental disabilities. I look at the ones—MTHFR—that are more “minor” than some of these other mutations.
Each individual mutation does not hold a lot of weight on its own, but when you map enough of them together and paint that picture and paint that story, then it starts to be a better picture.
Ashley James (2:07:59.614)
Well, yes, and then it also is very cathartic for the person.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:08:04.290)
By the way, did I interrupt? Did you have that family member try that probiotic?
Ashley James (2:08:08.079)
Yes, they just started. Yes, they are just—very excited.
Yes, so we tried. GABA—I was looking into this. It was very new to me. I had them just try a GABA supplement to see what would happen. I coupled it with the really highly absorbable form of B6—what is it? The P5P.
Their hands stopped shaking for about an hour. Then it came back, and they got dizzy and stopped taking the GABA because they started doing their own Googling and overshot it.
Yes, but it was worth a try. I fermented it into a yogurt because I learned that from going down the rabbit hole of the Lactobacillus reuteri. I don't know if you've heard about this. Dr. William Davis has been on my show a few times. Because I'm highly allergic to dairy, I ended up making a plant-based one, which is cashews. It was the only one that tasted good. I tried other plants, and cashews ended up being delicious. I have the recipe on my website, and I've made hundreds of batches of this because I make it for my family members—not just our own little nuclear unit, but for other people too.
It's the most delicious, to me, the most delicious yogurt you'll ever have. What's really cool is that one of my family members had chronic diarrhea so bad they couldn't leave the house. It was bad. It was due to taking some antibiotics. They just had the worst side effect of antibiotics: chronic-can’t-leave-the-house-diarrhea. Three days of eating the Lactobacillus reuteri yogurt that I made them, that went away.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:10:18.573)
I love that strain. It also helps your gut break down histamine as well. I'm a big fan of that one. Just thinking too, for your family member again, it's excitation versus inhibition. So that glutamate-GABA axis is thrown off.
Ashley James (2:10:36.751)
I think it is because they also have anxiety. They have trouble sleeping. They're tired all day, but they're wired at night. They have massive anxiety and depression. I'm like, this is it. I feel it's the GABA thing.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:10:52.087)
Yes remember, they're interchangeable—GABA and glutamate. It's a seesaw.
So you may also want to look into the supplement L-glutamine. Great gut health supplement. Horrible if you're sensitive to glutamate, because you could turn it into glutamate.
So what can we do to restore balance? We can boost GABA, or we can lower glutamate. You can look into that as well.
This goes into the whole monosodium glutamate—the MSG debate. Conventional medicine says no conclusive studies. Glutamate sensitivity is highly, highly genetic. You'll see random articles—this chemist said that removing MSG cured their daughter's autism, or helped with this ADHD, or helped with this or helped with that.
Let me put it this way—mutations that make you have higher glutamate, more sensitive to glutamate, are linked to OCD, anxiety, ADHD, insomnia, autism. So it makes sense that if you have any of those labels, you're likely—not guaranteed—you're likely more sensitive to glutamate.
So when you see an article that says this chemist said that removing MSG cured her daughter's autism, to the untrained eye, it's like, that's a bunch of BS. But I look at that and I say, yes, that checks out. Because the reason why this individual is neurodivergent, has autism, is likely due to higher glutamate sensitivity. So that amount of MSG that a normal person doesn't notice, someone with a highly sensitive nervous system to glutamate will respond to that.
So something to maybe look into as well—lower glutamate dieting. I had a client with epilepsy that went to get Chinese food. The mother confirmed there was no MSG in the food. She ate it anyways because they confirmed it was MSG-free. She had a seizure in the restaurant just from that. I'm not saying MSG is a problem for everybody, but it does depend on the person.
I'm also working on a course about that—each pathway. Because think about this: if I were to make a course—OCD, autism, ADHD, all these things—I would be repeating the same content. So just make it about the pathway.
Why does one person get OCD, someone else gets anxiety? Another symptom of high glutamate is perfectionism. I'm a perfectionist. I'm a high glutamate guy.
So it's like, why do people get certain characteristics versus others? That's the really fascinating question.
Does this family member have a lot of OCD or very repetitive-type thinking. Doesn't even necessarily have to be negative thinking—just very circular-type thinking?
You see the patterns I'm picking up here. This is how my brain works. This is how I help people: just looking at the individual and picking up on the patterns here. So I would look into foods higher in glutamate and see if that's an issue.
A lot of fermented foods, ironically enough, can be higher in glutamate. So something to keep in mind too. But again, if that glutamate—sure, there's glutamate possibly from the fermentation you did—but the strain of bacteria may far outweigh it.
So you see how my—I'm not saying that that's bad, bad, bad. But yes, I would look into theanine. Theanine, taurine—these are also really good things that can help with glutamate.
Lemon balm extract slows down the breakdown of GABA. Obviously, the bacteria would be the most root cause, if that makes sense—technically. But just other tools I'm throwing out here: lowering the glutamate consumed to restore that axis.
Ashley James (2:14:53.893)
I love it. And that could also be really beneficial to people with symptoms of ADHD.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:15:01.451)
Well, this is what I'm saying. What I just shared with you is similar to what I would say to a client. And it's not even a client with OCD. It's a client with high glutamate dysfunction.
That, on average, those individuals—when I tell them, “All right, we talked about the GABA-glutamate system, got some issues going on. Here's what it looks like…” Let's get out the nitty gritty of what it looks like to be someone with high glutamate and low GABA.
I tell them—because this could be a lot for someone to take on—I tell them, I’ll put my hand up and say, “These are all me to a T throughout my whole life too. So I'm with you here on this.”
Nine out of ten times, I tell them these. They're like, How did you—these are all me to a T!”
More likely to get my feelings hurt. Overthinking things. Perfectionism. That's what the signaling system does. Yours is overactive.
But again, you go to the doctor, they're just going to throw you on Adderall for ADHD.
Ashley James (2:16:06.061)
My gosh. So this is why I'm saying at the beginning that we have been born into the propaganda that there are diagnoses and these are real things. But they're actually man made constructs.
I would love it. Wouldn't it be cool if we got in a time machine and went to the Star Trek of our future, where instead of someone saying, “I have ADHD” or “I have diabetes,” they would say, “I have GABA dysregulation”? Because that's what it is. It's not you.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:16:45.815)
Well, the problem is everyone's a mixture of all of them too. I hear what you're saying.
Ashley James (2:16:52.968)
I know. I just mean, instead of saying, “I have ADHD,” it's like, well, what is that though?
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:16:57.174)
Well, again, that's what I mentioned initially—the top-down explanation versus the bottom-up.
I describe myself as a high histamine, high adrenaline, low GABA individual. So I need a lot of stuff to dial back my brain. I'm a very, very sensitive person. That's how I like to describe myself to people.
But at the same point, it's not like I sit here and I'm like, “Huh, I feel anxious right now. This feels like glutamate anxiety.” We can't be that precise, if that makes sense. That would be a bunch of marketing jazz. My approach is educating people. Here are all the things that stimulate the glutamate pathway. Here are things that lower the pathway.
I want you to look at your day—food, supplements, activities that you take, what time of day. I want you to map it all out. I want you to highlight all the things that raise histamine, all the things that raise glutamate, and then experiment removing the things that raise glutamate and see how you feel.
This is what I'm working on—building a system to do this because I'm not going to be able to change the world by doing strictly one-on-one consultations. I love those. That's how you get instant, no more guesswork, clear-cut answers. But I'm not going to change the world by doing that. That's not scalable to leave the impact that I want on the world.
That's why I'm working to— instead of doing an ADHD course that just gives you the same supplements that have been linked to that or something like that. Instead, I’d like to think of it as peeling back the layers of an onion.
“Oh what do you know? I have a lot of histamine in the morning. I have a lot of headaches in the morning.” I want people to see that visually. It's not just healthy food or processed garbage. A lot of very healthy foods can do this stuff. A lot of healthy foods have glutamate. A lot of healthy supplements—L-glutamine, an amazing gut-healing supplement, loads of data—if you're sensitive to glutamate, you should go nowhere near that.
I have people probably on a weekly basis come to work with me taking high doses of L-glutamine, and that's a significant reason why they feel like crap.
Ashley James (2:19:16.261)
My gosh. It's so much fun to go down this rabbit hole.
I would just say, I know of amazing practitioners who got to the point where they no longer work with the public because they've got courses or whatever—they're training other people. We happen to have you here at this prime moment, this window in your career where you still see people on an individual basis. So I would say now is a really good time.
Dr. Tyler did not pay me to say this, but now would be a really good time to book a consultation with him. I've just seen it a lot, where I bet in five years from now, you very rarely will see people on an individual level because you'll be more on helping the masses.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:20:02.153)
Yes. Hopefully, it's all software by then too. I’ve got to train the AI before AI takes my job. I'm somewhat serious, somewhat kidding. But yes.
Ashley James (2:20:16.289
No kidding. But every time you work with someone, you end up learning something. It's because everyone's different.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:20:23.470)
That's what I love because people ask me all the time, “What books do you read? How did you learn to do what you do? What podcasts do you listen to?” I don't read books. I have so many books. People tell me I should start. I have a pile. I don't listen to podcasts. I read primary literature, and I work with people one-on-one and connect the dots with what's in front of me. I love doing what I do too.
I'm not a medical doctor. I don't use medications, so I can be a lot more exploratory. Here's the thing: if there's a supplement that's been studied for allergies and I want to try to use it for autism—let's just throw that out there—even though there's no data on that, I can recommend this to someone. It's not a pharmaceutical.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you I have a hundred percent success rate with every nutrient. Sometimes, a lot of genes point towards a nutrient, we give it to someone, and they feel like crap. And that's fine. But they wasted what—$20, $30? They don't feel good for a day. The next morning they wake up fine. And that's why I love doing what I do. I can be a lot more exploratory with this stuff because we're not hand-dangling people's lives.
People mess themselves up infinitely more on their own accord anyway. So it's not like I'm giving you anything that you couldn't get on your own. I'm just showing you how to use them and giving you a blueprint—what supplements should you not touch or be mindful of.
Because if I tell you a certain supplement raises adrenaline, then a client asks me, “Hey, I'm working with another practitioner, and they recommended this. Should I take it?” The answer isn’t, “You can never take this because it raises your adrenaline.” The answer is: now that you're aware that it raises your adrenaline, you can go and take it, but maybe you take a little extra lithium to help balance it out.
If you're not aware and you take a supplement that raises your adrenaline, you might be shorter with people around you. You might be a little more defensive, or your tone might change. You may not mean anything by it. I figured that out with my wife—and we've been together 12 years now. She's amazing, but she would tell me, “Your tone…”
This is when I would start connecting the dots and think, “Huh. Well, I did take a tiny, tiny, tiny microdose of L-tyrosine this morning because I wanted to get a little more dopamine, have a bit of a better workout, and biohack a little today.” What do we know? That also made me a little bit more short.
My wife would come into my office while I'm working, and I’d give her a little bit of the, “What do you want? I'm doing stuff.” Not bad, but very minorly. How many people do this—these little changes from supplements?
So again, it's not that there's a hard rule—never take this. Now that you're aware of it, maybe that supplement—berberine, for example—amazing for blood sugar, amazing antimicrobial effects. So if you're a gut health professional–I’m not a gut health expert–if you go to someone else and they recommend berberine, you're allowed to take that because we want the antimicrobial benefits.
We just may need to add something else to counteract some of the stimulatory properties. That's how I like educating people about patterns so they can become their own health advocate.
Ashley James (2:24:06.200)
I love it. I love it so much. Would you come back on the show? I want to have you back.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:24:14.536)
I would love to. I had a great time. I love the way your brain works. Yes. I would absolutely love to. Yes.
Ashley James (2:24:18.542)
The next time you come on, I want to talk about your allergy to mice. It sounds like a fun story. I'd love to talk about your breast cancer thesis, and I'd love to just go deeper with you. I'm sure listeners will come to me with questions, and maybe by the time we have you back on, you'll have had some of our listeners come and work with you.
Just so you know, my listeners are amazing people. I've gotten feedback from other guests who’ve had the experience of working with my listeners that they’re higher level. They’re just really cool, higher level, awesome people.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:24:53.478)
I love that. I really do. I work with people from all different walks of life. Some people are very, very sick and don't know much about health. Other people feel great and want to feel better. I really love nerding out with people, so that'll be awesome.
Before I forget, I'd love to offer a discount code for your listeners as well. I usually just cover the DNA kit, which is $150. I'd be more than happy to extend that. If you already have data, you'll just get that applied to the deep dive itself.
What would you want the code to be so people can enter that at checkout and get that $150 off? Cool.
Ashley James (2:25:29.484)
Sweet. Yes. LTH is what I ask people to use—Learn True Health, LTH. So my listeners know that's the coupon code I ask people to use: LTH.
Thank you so much for offering a discount to us. That's something I love. I love asking for for the listeners because, what? It's definitely a different mindset.
I'm originally from Canada, and almost half our paycheck goes to the government. So we have “free” healthcare.
I just noticed growing up in Canada, we’re more willing to spend on supplements and external things that aren't covered by insurance, because they have to. Whereas in America, sometimes people are like, “Well, is it covered by insurance?” and then, “I'm not going to do it.” The people who are truly sick of being sick want to break out of that system, and we want to give them all the discounts we can.
They are investing thousands of dollars over time in getting these answers. You are someone who authentically can help them get either to the root cause or at least get enough answers to gain the most clarity they've ever gained before. So that's very exciting.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:26:44.156)
Or bare minimum to stop wasting tens of thousands of dollars of supplements over the next several years. I mean, if you’re listening now and you have that supplement graveyard in your pantry, you have all these graveyards, you don’t know what’s doing what–that amount of money could be just invested into figuring out what you actually need. You are probably going to get 30-40 supplement recommendations but I’d never ever put anyone on all those. At least you have a list.
Some people we meet, they're a little more experienced. They want to experiment a bit. They'll see some of the other options and experiment a bit. Other people are like, “I am not changing a single thing until I talk to you face to face.” That's fine too.
Number one feedback I get is, “This was amazing. I understood it, but it's a lot of information,” because I want to make sure you get the value out of this.
I hope I don't have to see you for a lot of follow-ups, because that means I did my job well.
Ashley James (2:27:47.742)
Although I'd love for you to maybe pull all the people that you've helped and then see in the future.
“Hey, I saw you two years ago and I helped you dial some stuff, and I haven't heard back from you since. Did that help? Did it make a difference?”
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:28:04.618)
Yes, I do have some of those surveys. The problem is it's dancing a fine line between how many times you remind them because I'm realizing sometimes people just don't want to respond.
I do have some of that data. Working on gathering that. But yes.
Ashley James (2:28:17.094)
Yes. Well, you're going to get the people who adamantly hated it, like, “You made it worse,” or you're going to get the people that say you literally saved their life. It's either one star or five stars. You don't get the three and four stars. They don't typically write to you.
But I have a dear, dear chiropractor. I love him so much. He said early on, he got out of chiropractic college and he thought he was the savior. He was chiropractic Jesus. He'd only see a client once, and they'd never see him again. And he thought, “I am curing them.”
He really had that amazingly young ego that just thought he was the best chiropractor in the world. Then an old-school chiropractor who had been practicing forever—maybe 40 years—called him up one day and said, “Okay, you saw so and so last week, and I just saw them.”
He bragged, “My clients only ever come once because I'm helping them so much.”
This chiropractor said, “I hate to break it to you, but you're so bad, they never come back to you.” He ended up taking him under his wing and actually training him, and he became an outstanding chiropractor.
But the point is, if you don't hear from people again, it's either you really helped them, or you really didn’t help them.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:29:34.970)
Well, that's exactly why I do have some stuff set up. I believe it's one month, two months after—trying to get that data. Because before I'm really deciding to scale this, I really do want to make sure of that. You don't want to build this big, huge thing and find out that it's not what you thought.
So definitely something to always try to keep in mind, especially when you're trying to do a new angle of health optimization.
Ashley James (2:30:00.052)
So when people work with you, what is it? Obviously, we talked the whole time, but everyone’s so individual. Can you walk us through what it looks like if someone went to your website? What does it look like to work with you?
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:30:11.588)
Yes, so this is very easy because it's only one offering—one package that's offered currently. It's the one-on-one deep dive genetic analysis.
We order your DNA kit, it shows up at your door, you swab your cheek, send it back. Results take around three weeks or so to come back. What makes me different is I don't have set panels. I don't work as if you wanted the brain health panel and the computer is going to spit out your report with all your genes and notes on it—there you go. I don't work that way.
I hand-make every one of my reports because I want to find the most genetically disrupted things. You're checked for a hundred million mutations, but at the same point, I don't want to overwhelm you or bore you with 50 pages of information. So I find, in my expert opinion, the most genetically disrupted genes. There are only so many genes we can support. I believe we should support the ones that are the most highly mutated—those workers that are working the least overall.
Then I require an hour-long call with every one of my clients. Let's just say you have anxiety and depression. I have the report that I'm going to read to you, line by line—that's what we go through. I need to understand you more. Do you wake up and not want to get out of bed—you're depressed? Or do you wake up out of bed anxious to start the day, with so much to do? Does anxiety lead the way for your mental health, or is it more depression?
That's way beyond just a mental health panel. So I always, always require genetic testing. I require the hour-long call because I need to make sure you understand this information and also get more information from you.
A lot of it is—when I say improv—I’ll ask a question, you say something, I pick up on a pattern, and then I end up writing more notes on that as we're going. This is why I call what I do hyper-personalized medicine. It's not just personalized, because I'm really here in the weeds, drafting this up for you, explaining it to you, editing as we go.
This is why I need to figure out other options, because as much as I love doing this, it does take a lot of time and effort to do so. I call it the toddler-proof protocol.
It's a lot of information that we discuss, but then I tie it all together. Toddler-proof protocol—so easy a toddler could do it.
First thing upon waking: one scoop of this, one pill of this. You could maybe work up to two if you'd like. Wait 20 minutes before breakfast. Breakfast with other meals as needed for stress, or as needed leading up to ovulation. I add these specific things leading up to bedtime. You can start with this. You could take this supplement in the morning if you'd like. Some people take it at bedtime. You'll expect. So I map all this out for you to make it as easy as possible for success—to give that white-glove service.
The days of paying two, three hundred bucks for a genetic panel and having it change your life—I mean, I don't think they were ever really here, honestly—but it's just, there's so much information to try and have someone understand a game plan. If you get 50 supplement recommendations from a genetic test, how do you know the top five to take? There's no ranking. There's no priority there. That's what I provide. I also really try to make sure they understand that.
Then people get three weeks of email support afterward. That's just basically, “Hey Tyler, day number three, my mood’s better. Now I'm nauseous. What do you think's going on?” I'm there. That's just unlimited contact—just to make sure we're on the right track. Most of my clients are like, “I feel better. Thank you.” They don't even reach out at all.
There's no such thing as a perfect science. Sometimes people don't respond well, and I need to make sure if I put you on this protocol, I need to make sure you get started off to a good start.
That's what's in the deep dive. Then there are additional follow-ups that can be purchased a la carte as needed. Usually after the first NUJ, I don't want to see people go longer than two months on the protocol without getting some bloods done and a follow-up.
So that's pretty much the deep dive workflow there.
Ashley James (2:34:28.800)
I love it. So cool. Genetics can't necessarily, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but can't necessarily say what people have sensitivities to or allergies to, but you can definitely, can you see like this gene says you have an egg allergy or this gene says you have a wheat allergy? So you can see that in the genes?
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:34:55.079)
Yes. Based on a lot of different mutations, you are more prone. This mutation is linked to being more sensitive to tomatoes. This mutation is linked to gluten. This mutation means that you make too much histamine. This mutation means you break it down slower. This mutation means sulfur. Based on this 800,000 gene report, you're more sensitive to oxalates. So the answer to all of those is yes.
I'm not a nutritionist. I don't do full meal plans. I will absolutely let you know: here are some food categories you're likely sensitive to. Here's where I would start with trying to remove the foods. Because if you are sensitive to sulfur, sensitive to histamine, sensitive to oxalates, sensitive to gluten, sensitive to glutamate—I'm not telling you to avoid all of those. There's no food left.
So you will get guidance. Let's be strict with this one for now and see how much it helps you, and take it from there.
So it is not just supplements. It's supplements, foods, and lifestyle habits. If you're sensitive to histamine, exercise releases histamine. Histamine wakes us up. You should only exercise in the morning.
Ashley James (2:36:02.215)
That's me. I mean, I can swim at night, but if I do a gym workout at night, it's like I just drank coffee at night. I can't.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:36:10.618)
Yes. Even with no pre-workout. Yes. Absolutely.
Ashley James (2:36:14.954)
I can. I recently was able to get off of all caffeine, which has been amazing. I was definitely dependent on it for a long time. I don't know if I'd say addicted, but I felt very dependent on it.
Getting off of something and then going, okay, I'm building myself up. Now I wake up and I have energy in the morning, and my mental clarity, and I jump out of bed. That was not me ten years ago. It's cool to see the progress.
I'm off of caffeine, but if I were to eat some dark chocolate late at night—which I did the other night because we had this organic, vegan, low-sugar dark chocolate, super healthy thing—and I'm like, hey, chocolate's good for you. My gosh, it kept me up half the night. It's just that level of sensitivity. But not everyone.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:37:06.473)
That could be the theobromine. A couple different things. Again, there are multiple compounds in chocolate that can be stimulating. Which one did it most for you? Was it a combination?
Ashley James (2:37:17.285)
If I had any caffeine after 2 p.m., I'll be up till 2 in the morning, whereas my husband could drink a venti and fall asleep. He's one of those.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:37:27.355)
Probably a fast vs. slow metabolizer.
Ashley James (2:37:32.367)
He's got that red hair gene, so we always have to tell the dentist he needs double—whatever you think he needs, he needs twice as much of that numbing agent. It always surprises the dentist. They're like, “You can feel that?” We're like, “We told you he has the red hair gene.” It's just wild.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:37:48.319)
Yes. Now I'm trying to remember what you just said. I had something. So have you guys ever taken melatonin? Do you guys have different sensitivities to that?
Ashley James (2:37:59.321)
I can take a really low dose, but if he takes too much, he gets super groggy.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:38:13.706)
Dose per dose, would you say that you're more sensitive than he is?
Ashley James (2:38:18.242)
I don't know. I don't know because he only will do a low dose if he does, he super does not like how he feels the next day. Whereas I’ve experimented with it because I read that milligram study with breast cancer—not that I have breast cancer—but just the interesting results of what happens when you take 20 milligrams.
I had major lucid dreaming. Thought I was awake all night, but I was sleeping. And then the next day, I felt like I was sleeping when I was awake. It's crazy.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:38:48.448)
Yes, well I asked that because the same gene—the CYP1A2 gene—that breaks down caffeine is the same gene that breaks down melatonin.
So my wife is a fast metabolizer. I'm a slow metabolizer. I am much more sensitive to caffeine, and she could take literally five times the melatonin dose I do and wake up fine. I have to be careful—I’ll wake up groggy. So I take maybe half a milligram tops of melatonin.
That's why I was curious. Again, patterns. How my brain works. I was curious to see with you as well there. Even without looking at the genes, if you're more sensitive to caffeine and melatonin than he is, it's very, very likely that it's because of mutations in that gene that metabolizes both of them.
There's always a cause and an effect for everything. Nothing's random.
Ashley James (2:39:40.054)
Great patterns. Yes. I'm so excited for your AI program that's going to come out one day. This is going to be so much fun.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:39:44.990)
Yes, I've been putting thoughts into building it, and that is a massive, massive—I'm working on the core stuff right now. Then I want these courses for ground level, for anyone to begin to understand. This is ground level. This is not high-level, doctor-only.
I'm working on getting those out early in the new year, pathway by pathway, to figure out what works or doesn't for you. Then I want to have a more in-depth version of that—more advanced supplement stuff for practitioner training. That would be the next two steps now.
But I've got a lot of life to live. Just turned 32. So, a lot of life to live, a lot of advancements to be made.
Ashley James (2:40:25.532)
When I saw how you look—healthy, handsome, and young—I was so… I'm 44, which I know is not old, but something happened. I've been doing this podcast for coming up on 10 years now, and something happened where, all of a sudden, all the really cool experts are younger than me. When did that happen? So yes, it's really neat.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:40:49.868)
Thank you. Well, just start sharing your biological age instead. I'm 32, actually.
Ashley James (2:40:55.150)
Exactly. Actually, I know I do look 32. I have amazing skin. I do have great genetics, and I take care of my genetics. I'm so excited to have you back on the show. I have several friends that have children with epilepsy. I'm definitely going to send them your way. I can't wait to dive deeper with you next time.
It's been such a pleasure having you on the show. Is there anything you'd like to say or any homework you'd like to give the listener? Anything you'd like to say to wrap up today's interview?
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:41:22.426)
Yes, well, first off, thank you so much for having me on. I hope you guys are listening—I shared a lot about how my brain looks at these things, and I'd heavily, heavily encourage you: one of the links she'll be sharing takes you to the free 15-minute little primer version of the cell signaling stuff, just a really high-level overview for people.
Then there's also the full version—it's a bit over an hour—of the other course there. I'm not sure which of the other courses will be released from then, but that's setting the stage to really look at health how the way I do.
If you're on a lot of supplements and you don't feel great, a lot of the time it's about what you can remove, not what you need to add. So I'll leave it with that.
Ashley James (2:42:08.762)
I'd say the same with processed food and drugs and alcohol.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:42:14.838)
God, I don't even know the amount of beer I used to drink in college and stuff. I have no idea. The gluten didn't bother me somehow. The alcohol didn't. God.
Ashley James (2:42:25.774)
And the all-nighters? How did we even survive our teenage years? I don't even know. But thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been wonderful. I can't wait to have you back.
Dr. Tyler Panzner (2:42:36.400)
Thank you.
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