Please note, this is an automated transcript so it is not 100% accurate.

Kashif (00:00):
There’s no change happening, it’s just options. So the way that happened is 250,000 years ago, there was a change in our DNA. Meaning that we used to be something else, and now we became who we are. And we today don’t have the technology to do that, by the way. We don’t know how to do that. But it’s very clear, there’s a couple chromosomes that are like pinched and been augmented. How that happened, we don’t know, but it happened. And we became who we are.

Guy (00:39):
Hey, Guy here. My epic guest today is Kashif Khan. And boy, does this conversation go deep. I was recently actually being interviewed on a podcast and they asked me, what do you feel true wealth is? And my immediate answer was health. Because if, like me, you believe that we are spiritual beings in a meat suit having a physical experience, then doesn’t it make sense to nurture the very house that we’re living in, which is our body? Then if you look at what is true health, then I believe it’s spiritual, mental, emotional and physical aspects. Even though we tend to only look at physical quite often, or we are conditioned to, but for a holistic, happy, joyful human experience, or more of it, then we need to nurture all four. With this conversation with Kashif today, we certainly get into the three other aspects, but we also touch on the spiritual aspects as well, and how the very DNA within our body allows us to have more deeper connections to the universe as well. It’s a fascinating topic. I also was so excited by this conversation, I actually reached out and partnered with the DNA company as well. So if this conversation resonates with you, then we have a special offer just for all my listeners in the below this video, whatever you’re looking in the description, there’ll be for all the Let It In podcast listeners. Anyway, that’s there if you choose to explore more, which I’m certainly doing personally. Enjoy this conversation. Much love from me and let me know what you think about it in the comments. Cool. Kashif, welcome to the podcast.

Kashif (02:14):
Pleasure, man. Good to be here with you.

Guy (02:16):
I’m fascinated to see where this conversation goes today. It’s certainly a passion of mine and an exploration on the inward journey, but a different way, understanding our biology and our DNA and everything that goes with it. So it was a lot of fun. I don’t doubt it. My first question to you is, though, if you were on an airplane right now and a stranger sat next to you and asked you what you did for a living, what would you say?

Kashif (02:43):
So that answer has changed for me recently. If they asked me two months ago, I would have said that I run a functional genomics research company and I’m planning to change healthcare. Today, there is a shift happening in humanity and we’re losing half of our brothers and sisters to beliefs that they shouldn’t be believing in. And my mission now is to use health as a way to bring people back. Our ancestral habits of food, exercise, lifestyle, sunlight, breathing, meditation, all of these things that we’ve lost, everything that I discover has come back to, we already knew what to do, we just lost it. And so my mission has changed and I’ve actually even hired a CEO to take over for me so that I can focus on this new mission.

Guy (03:36):
Wow, what a mission. I love it. It’s very similar to mine. My mission is to have people connect back to themselves. We call our work Reconnected. Our company’s Living Flow, but everything’s about being reconnected. And we look at that we’re disconnected from ourselves, which disconnects us from others, which disconnects us from nature, and disconnects us from something far greater than us that binds the whole universe together. And it’s within that. And what you do and health has been such a big, long journey for me as well, that it is time that we woke up to what’s possible. I mean, what is possible? When we see disease out there today and we see people like the stats are scary. Like I saw Chris Kresser put up a stat recently that 70% of teenagers in the U.S. are eating processed foods. It’s the bulk of their diet. That just terrifies me as a new dad.

Kashif (04:31):
I mean, if you want fear mongering, I can drop stats for the next 60 minutes. I’ll make you, you know, like this. Well, you’ll shed tears of disbelief in terms of how our regulators and authorities allowing this to happen. But yeah, it’s also one in three teenage girls in the US is now committed to or sorry, considered suicide as a tool to alleviate her of her pain. 30 percent. And boys, I think it’s one in five. You know, and there’s some hormones we spoke about why there’s a bit of variability there. You have two generations ago, one in 10,000 kids labeled as autistic. Last generation, one in 500. The CDC, the Center for Disease Control in the U.S. now says it’s one in 38. The kids haven’t changed. They’re the same kids. It’s all the inputs that have changed and we still call it a disease and believe it’s something that they just have. And I can go on and on and on with data, but in a nutshell, it’s we are not genetically designed for our current 2023 reality when it comes to food, environment, lifestyle. And this is why we’re so sick. But having said that, it’s also so easy to deal with. If we just identify that as the root cause, we’re making the wrong choices. We need better choices.

Guy (05:51):
It’s really a proactive approach, isn’t it? We have to take action ourselves and see what’s the potential out there. From what I see, I’m in front of probably 300 people a month now, on average, in person, okay? And there’s definitely this frustration, a feeling of, I can’t put my finger on what is going on, but I know I need to do something. But so often we’re so scared to meet what needs to be changed, because we’re frightened to see what’s laying underneath. Right? Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Kashif (06:29):
We see that, so whenever we deal with a patient, if I go back to our base business of we use genetic testing to help people identify a root cause, we never deal with anyone without first dealing with their executive function, their neurochemicals, how they think, because their perception of the world and what they feel may be different than what’s actually going on. And the perception of other people looking in at them may also be completely different than what they think is happening. And all of our behavior and our perception is driven by the neurochemicals of the brain. The neurochemicals are driven by the genes that instruct them. So a gene is an instruction in your cell that tells your body how to do all the little jobs that it’s doing, including making neurochemicals, binding them, clearing them. So if I take a chemical like you know, no adrenaline, and I understand how efficiently you bind it, how efficiently you clear it, I can all of a sudden start to understand how you deal with emotion, and how you deal with trauma, and how you are more emotionally intelligent or less emotionally intelligent. And then all of a sudden your perception has a set of lenses on it that’s baked in. You’re born that way, right? Yes, there’s a bit of nurture to that, but ultimately there’s a foundation, there’s an innate wiring. And we find that half of healing is that. It is understanding how you see everything, why a 2 out of 10 feels like an 8 out of 10, and it could potentially come back to a 2 out of 10 without even dealing with the problem itself. And there’s just been so much success there. Words like anxiety, depression, addiction are actually people’s superpowers that are just expressing as problems because they’re using their superpowers to kryptonite. They’re in the wrong context.

Guy (08:14):
Wow. So when you discover, because it’s so empowering once you know that, right? Because we’re a victim to those emotions and feelings, you know? Once we start to understand that, what are we then doing from, what’s the protocol? Is it a case of process of elimination and then supplementation? Like, what are the kind of overall arching?

Kashif (08:37):
Well, there’s no… Any mood and behavior avatar, let’s say, here’s a profile that you fit in, right? Let’s speak about careers. You are more reward-seeking or you are less reward-seeking. You are more going to be on the front lines fighting or going to be more in the backdrop, more risk averse. We can start to look at even just that one silo of the brain. Now, all of a sudden, that same thing can be your superpower. I am reward-seeking. I should go be an entrepreneur and build businesses. It can also be your kryptonite. I need constant satisfaction. I’m going to become an addict or depressed. Right? So there’s no bad news. There’s only self-discovery. Here’s what I was wired to do. My ancestral habits and whoever I came from, they were warriors, they were accountants, they were artists. That’s what I’ve inherited and that’s who I was meant to be. And if I’m doing that, I’m going to thrive and I’m going to be the best version of myself. If I’m doing something else that I was not designed for, it’s going to feel like pain, problems, anxiety, maybe even lead to chronic disease because of the stress and cortisol, etc. So the answer is really unraveling that there is no good or bad. There’s who you are, and everyone has a superpower, cognitive superpower. We haven’t gone into all the other systems yet, hormones, detoxification, but just your brain, there’s a superpower there. If you are not in the right place at the right time, it’s going to feel bad. If you’re in the right place, it’s going to feel like you are superhuman. And we do this all the time. It’s then yes, There are supplements. So for example, I am highly reward-seeking. I can’t bind dopamine properly. The receptors in my brain are not dense enough. So it’s very difficult for me to feel pleasure. And this is a genetic attribute. I also clear the dopamine too fast. It doesn’t last long enough. So I need more and I need more and I need more. So I can very easily do what I do, which is build businesses because I’m constantly seeking reward. Or I can become an addict, which guess what? I’ve also been. Now, if I want to go on vacation and relax, yes, there are supplements that I can take that can boost my dopamine levels up. Right. So here’s my innate wiring. Here’s your Ferrari. Right. You want to go race or do you want to go off roading? Now you know what changes you need to make to make it fit each one of those contexts.

Guy (10:55):
Right. Gotcha. Gotcha. So tell me about your like, because you’re clearly very passionate about this. And that’s what I loved about you when I first started listening to you speak. There’s got to be a pain that’s driven that passion, for sure. Am I guessing? Yeah. Do you mind sharing a little bit about your journey?

Kashif (11:16):
Yeah. From a young age, simple example is Tylenol. I would ask, why? You’re masking this headache. You don’t even know why it’s happening. And the adults around me would say, you don’t understand how this works. And to me, that wasn’t a good enough of an answer, right? My father passed away when I was 17. Aneurysm just dropped to the ground while he was talking to someone, just died right in front of him. My mother, you know, hysterectomy, was always sick, couldn’t work. So I saw illness, there was addiction, mental health issues in my family. So I saw the worst of it. And I kept asking, why, why, why, why? And nobody would give me the answer. So I then went on my entrepreneurial journey. I started working, built a few businesses, and then I got sick. And in those two decades of me working, I was away from the family, just heavily focused on the business. And when I got sick, I started to ask the questions, why? Why do I have eczema to the point where I can’t open my left eye? It was sealed shut. Why do I have psoriasis so bad that if I were to make a fist, my knuckles would bleed? Why do I have migraines so bad that I can’t go to work for two days? Why do I have gut issues that when we go out to eat as colleagues and peers, I’m the guy that just gets so bloated that I have to leave early and I don’t know what happened. So I was taking multiple pills for multiple different conditions, which I was told I had, and I kept saying, why? They all happened at the same time, all at once. I must have eaten something wrong, done something wrong. What did I do? Could not get that answer. So I went on a self-discovery journey, and I learned that there were certain genetic processes in my body that were just completely suboptimal. There was genes entirely missing. I was literally missing lines of code in my human genome. So there were certain detoxification jobs and anti-inflammatory jobs that my body just didn’t do. And then all of a sudden, the same habits, the same foods, the same workload, the same stressors, which for my peers and my business partner was no problem, for me was slowly killing me. Right? So when I learned that, I did unravel these conditions. And I don’t have them anymore. And I’m healthier than I’ve ever been. I don’t even catch a common cold anymore. Because I now understand the biology, how the gears and cogs in my bodies actually works, and what the right choices are for me. And now I always make the right choice. And I always take the right supplement, and I remove the supplements I don’t need, etc, etc. It goes on and on. There’s all these options. I’m only doing exactly and precisely what I need. I am now thriving, and not only do I not have a disease or pills, but I’m in better shape than prior to getting sick. So that’s what drove all this, and it got to the point where I got my arthritic mother out of bed, I got my anxiety-induced niece back to school, and I said, I need to build a business out of this, and I did. And I built the interpretation that I wished existed when I started my journey.

Guy (14:14):
Gotcha. How did you know where to look then? Or was it just a case of trial and error going in that direction?

Kashif (14:20):
Going back to the very first thing I said, that I feel like there’s a purpose. I’ve discovered why I’m here. I don’t think there’s any coincidences. One of four people in the world that could actually read the entire human genome lived 10 minutes away from me. One of the most brilliant functional medicine doctors who was hired by some of the major ingredients manufacturers and supplement makers live down the street from me also, right? So I should say, sorry, work down the street from me, from my office. And so I had access to these people and they just kept coming and falling in my lap. And it’s like, this is exactly what I need in all these pieces. But I had to see how all the pieces fit and what was actually needed. They’re sitting in their labs doing their work like this, which is what scientists are good at, right? Here’s my job with their blinders on versus it actually can be extracted and applied in this context, which is the way people actually need it. Me being the person in need, I see what I need. Give me the info, but I’m going to reconstruct it into what I needed. So that’s what happened is the right people in the right place at the right time came together and we then spent three years clinically studying 7,000 people. Because from my experience, the thing that was missing from genetics wasn’t more genetic science. It was applying it in practice with a clinician and hand-holding people and actually changing their lives. So we did that. And now we’re sitting on this database of insights where ask me any question about any chronic disease you can think of, and I’ll tell you exactly why it happens and how to prevent it.

Guy (15:58):
Holy shit. That’s incredible. Like, wow. Because it’s just not common conversation, right? Like, when I’m in my environment and I’m in town, people are like, oh, you know, I feel a bit unwell today. I got this, I got that. And there’s no… clear path to what’s possible and say, well, you can actually do something about this if you choose to, as opposed to just going into the medical system that is created. There’s such strong beliefs around the current paradigm.

Kashif (16:32):
Yeah. And this is the big challenge is you have a system where people have been told, go do whatever you want. And when you break something, the doctor’s job is to fix you. Right. Not doctor. Look at what they’re doing and make sure they don’t break themselves. We believe heart disease is in my family. Diabetes is in my family. Breast cancer is my family. And we never ask, why do these things happen? And if you understood why they happen, they’re so easy to prevent and even reverse if you have them. We’ve taken hundreds of people off of Lipitor. We’ve dealt with hundreds of women with breast cancer and ovarian cancer and figured out exactly what hormone genetic failures caused it. So they don’t know what to focus on. And so, yeah, give me a five-year-old child and I will map out their entire health future so that they don’t get a chronic disease. And I say that with confidence because if I’ve been able to reverse people’s illness, I know I can prevent it. It’s the same mechanism.

Guy (17:32):
Yeah, how hard are you finding it with human behavior to apply it? Because if you know what I mean, because if we got the mentality, if we’re being conditioned, I’m just going to go and take this pill to numb my headache kind of thing. And in all aspects of our life, we have to meet this halfway, don’t we?

Kashif (17:50):
Yeah. So there’s a challenge twofold, not only the people, but also the clinicians. So the clinicians, no fault of their own, have been trained on. Here’s your toolkit. Your toolkit is acute care. Respond to pain. And if you get rid of the pain, you succeeded. But you don’t need to ask, why did the pain happen? That’s the toolkit they’ve been given. And everything in that toolkit is masking symptoms, masking symptoms, masking symptoms, never diving into the system that 10, 15 years prior to the symptom, something was triggered. and you continue to cause that trigger and fuel that fire for 10, 15 years until it eventually turned into a chronic disease. So that’s one big one. And clinicians post new world COVID reality where people have seen how fragile we are, do have a different perspective and they’re actively seeking new solutions that are outside of their toolkit. And they know that they need to look for tools that are not what they were academically trained on because they’re disappointed with their patient outcomes. On the patient side, yeah, it’s been indoctrinated that the doctor’s job is to fix you. And these things are innate. You have this disease as opposed to you caused this disease. And so people believe, when I get a headache, give me a pill. Don’t ask why the headache happened. Give me a pill. So now, having said that, There’s so many people that have come out of the post-COVID wave understanding that they can take charge of their own health and have a better sort of route beyond just symptom asking, that we are busier than we could be, right? Meaning that we couldn’t take on more. So it has to happen this way, where there’s new science, there’s a new way to look at how we actually respond to our body. That has to sort of hit, like we said, the early adopters, biohackers, wellness seekers, health enthusiasts, podcasts, fans like this, right? Let’s get that done first. And when there’s so much success there, it’s automatically going to start to trickle down.

Guy (19:58):
Yeah, yeah, totally. What is then, because I want to get into potential as well, but what is the protocol? If people are listening to this right now and just go, oh, I’ve got a great aha moment here. How would you kind of do a broad blanket of the protocol and the very things that you do then with people? So you mentioned the first thing about perception and

Kashif (20:24):
Yeah, so there’s lots of ways to go about it. Here’s what we do. So there’s, first of all, we supply tests to hundreds of clinics, and they’re mostly in the functional and integrative space, a lot of naturopaths also. So I know what they’re doing also, because we work with them to build programs. But here’s what we typically do. Somebody will come to our website, buy a test, and they’re going to learn about themselves. And the first thing that we had to do in that was eliminate all the noise. This concept of more data is more is incorrect. You and me don’t need to know of our 22,000 genes what version of each gene we have. We need to know what’s wrong and how do I fix it. That’s it. Meaning, interpret this data for me. I don’t need data, I need insights. Someone should tell me exactly what to action from this. And that’s what was missing. And so we’ve learned out of the 22,000 genes, there’s only about 100 or so that matter for functional interpretation, for chronic disease, for aging, not for genetic conditions. There’s a lot more for, you have this rare genetic cancer, right? But that’s a tiny, tiny fraction of healthcare. It’s less than 3%. The vast majority, 90% plus, is chronic disease and age-related, which can be prevented and reversed. So step one is they go through six key systems, everything about the brain. Everything about diet and nutrition, should you be a vegan? Should you take the keto diet? Do carbs matter? How does your body actually metabolize macro and micronutrients? Then everything about sleep. The genetics of sleep isn’t so simple as I don’t sleep. No, it’s more precise like I can’t fall asleep, more circadian rhythm, clock issue, I can’t stay asleep. more a quality of sleep issue, or I sleep through the night, but when I wake up, I’m not rested. That’s more like a detoxification recovery issue. Very different problems to solve. Then we look at hormones. So everything around, especially for women, this is so important. In fact, I would say when it comes to health care in general, the area that needs the most change and support is everything around female hormone health, from infertility to PCOS, endometriosis to breast cancer. All of these things are so clear. but they’re made so foggy and gray in healthcare because, again, we’re not looking at the root. So everything around hormones, libido, hair loss, skin, body development, putting on muscle, burning fat, that’s all hormones. Then chronic disease and aging. Why is it that I have a propensity towards cardiac disease or Alzheimer’s or cancer and what do I do about it, which is the most important part. You can tell me I have an 8 to 10 times elevated risk for dementia, but if you haven’t also told me what to do about it, you’re probably causing my dementia from the anxiety you just gave me. Am I telling you that? So tell me what the trigger is and then I can work on that and never have the disease. The last part, is innate cellular health, so immunity, detoxification, anti-inflammatory, because this is where everything starts. If the cells are thriving and healthy, the mitochondria is at full resilience level, the cells are not inflamed, you can’t get a chronic disease. At least I can speak to American data, the top 15 killers in the United States, 14 of them are all rooted in inflammation. Meaning if you do not have inflammation, you cannot get these 14 diseases. Diabetes, cardiovascular, Alzheimer’s, etc. And the 15th one, which is actually the number 3 cause of death in the United States, is medical error. a doctor making a mistake. It’s also an inflammation because the doctor wouldn’t see you if you didn’t have inflammation to begin with, right? So we do all these things and the last thing is we reinterpret all of these six systems for the context of longevity. Now we’ve dealt with all of these sort of reactive disease and aging related type issues. How do we now extend your life? How do we add 10 years, 15 years beyond what you thought you were going to get? Because we’re going to use these same systems and tools for the purpose of slowing down the degradation of the cell, making sure that there’s no inflammation, making sure that your hormones are in check, that your neurochemicals and your mood is thriving. Let’s add a couple of decades, right? So that’s all of what it looks like. If somebody needs to go beyond the report for clinical support, we have from MDs to naturopaths to PhD scientists, whatever they need available, but for the most part, people get their answers from the report.

Guy (24:52):
Holy shit, there’s a lot in that, what you just said. So let me just recap and ask a couple of questions. So from what you’re saying, for the listeners, is that let’s say there’s been, through generations, a history of cancer, for instance, for the last three generations. What you’re saying is, does that mean through this work and understanding what is actually going on, we don’t have to be the fourth generation?

Kashif (25:25):
Yes. Now we’re going to understand why, right? So suppose there’s, you know, prostate cancer. Why does this keep happening? You don’t have prostate cancer in your genetics. You have hormone imbalances in your genetics, which eventually cause the prostate cancer. So some men make a lot more testosterone than others. Genetically, it’s very easy to predict that. We know each gene that metabolizes each step of the hormone cascade. So if you are that man that makes more testosterone, check one. Check two is some men convert their testosterone into what we call dihydrotestosterone, DHT. It’s a more potent version, manly man testosterone, but it’s also toxic and inflammatory. Some men, step three of three, do not have the right detoxification pathways. So in this particular case, there’s a process called glucuronidation, which clears DHT. Some men are missing that gene. It’s called a copy number variation. They don’t have the gene, completely missing. So if you make too much testosterone, you rapidly convert it into the potent and toxic version, and you’re missing the detox genes that are meant to get rid of for you, well, there’s your source of inflammation. And now, if you also don’t exercise, so you’re not using the testosterone, you also have the wrong environmental factors around you that mimic hormones or are kind of fueling that hormone fire, or maybe you’re an athlete and you decide to take some supplements that up-regulate your testosterone levels, causing even more fuel to that fire. Right? This is where genetics and epigenetic habits have to meet in order to have a fulsome answer. You can’t just look at one. Here’s the priorities. My genes are telling me, here’s the job my body doesn’t do. Now, here’s the habits that could make me sick. Here’s the habits that can make me thrive. Right? If you start to paint this picture that’s more functional, as opposed to, I have prostate cancer in my family. That’s too simple of an answer. That’s just a warning sign. That’s just a check engine light. This, what we just talked about, is where you get to work and actually prevent it.

Guy (27:35):
Yeah, wow. Yes, incredible, isn’t it? So then, being online myself and with the business, but then in person, I see a lot of marketing and different things popping up on my feeds because I have to go in there as part of what I do, right? And it’s like, everyone is vying, this is the way, in terms of the way we exercise, the way we eat. You know, you got vegans out there, you got carnivore diets out there, you got keto diets out there, right? And it’s like, everyone’s claiming to be the answer. So what you’re saying is then, is that some people are not eating meat when they should be having some, and then there’s others that are eating too much meat when they shouldn’t be.

Kashif (28:23):
You know, and here’s the thing is that step one is looking for an answer. And I applaud anyone that’s doing what you said they’re trying. Yeah. And they found a YouTube video, they found a podcast, they found something like, wow, this sounds amazing. Look how good this person looks. And it probably worked for them. But if you ask them their story, they probably struggled for five, six, seven, 10 years before they actually found the thing. And that’s why they’re so motivated to share it with the world, just like I am right now, right? Because they struggled and struggled and struggled. And then they found this thing. It was like, wow, this solved all my problems. I need to tell everybody. Now, if you are wired like them genetically, amazing. You’re going to have the same results and feel incredible. If you’re not, the thing that they’re doing that’s making them thrive can make you feel worse. And all of a sudden you lose motivation, you’re depressed, and like, what’s wrong with me? Nothing’s wrong with you, you’re just not designed for that. Let’s figure out what you are designed for.

Guy (29:18):
Yeah, okay. But you mentioned longevity as well. What do you think is our human potential? There’s a lot of noise online around this conversation as well at the moment.

Kashif (29:29):
And I’d love to know what your thoughts are. If you look at the innate structure of DNA, So what is aging? Aging is damage to the DNA, degradation of the cell, there’s inflammation. The cell starts to lose its structure. You see it with the white hair and the sagging skin. And we’re trying to chase and get ahead of that. So on your DNA, there’s these caps called telomeres. And they act as like bumpers that are like shock absorbers. Now, when you look at the structure of them, they look like they’re designed to last 120 years. which tells me that we are designed to live to 120. And now if you look at the people that who have lived to somewhat the maximum, the maximum age we’ve seen is I think 122 or 123, right? Some lady out of France that just had a perfect life. She inherited a billion dollars, had zero stress and amazing food and all she did was socialize, right? So she lived to 122. And so now all of a sudden that’s our potential we should all reach that but the choices we make and the habits we have take years away so we start to eat things and we start to breathe things and we start to be with people and we start to be in areas and we start to touch things and all of these things that are the wrong choices for us take years away now if you always made the right choice that was aligned to your genetic code, I believe 120 is your potential, and not 120 in a hospital bed, 120 dancing at a wedding. That’s what you should be doing.

Guy (31:11):
When we get our mapping and we start to understand what we need to apply in our lives, like use yourself as an example, how challenging is it to maintain that lifestyle?

Kashif (31:29):
So a lot of these things, it’s challenging when you’re adding habits and you’re changing and removing things that you need, right? So there’s so much variety today, it’s so much easier to do. If I tell you that you have the suboptimal AMY1 gene and you don’t metabolize starch as well, and you have the suboptimal TCF7L2 gene, so your insulin response is off, so guess what? No more rice, bread, pasta, sugar. you’ve got to stay away from starch because it’s going to give you diabetes and potentially Alzheimer’s and maybe even cardiovascular disease. So for that person, like, what do I do? Well, there’s so many almond flour, coconut flour type products that are actually protein rich and have no starch that we didn’t have access to five years ago. Right. So first of all, there’s options. But yes, that’s what I would say is that you’re learning. Here’s the priority. My genome is screaming, here’s the job that your body just isn’t doing, so you need to prioritize this. Now, to figure out what to do, it’s the epigenetic habit of environment, nutrition, lifestyle. Environment, what is around me, what am I exposed to? Nutrition, what am I eating, including supplements? And lifestyle, how do I exercise, how do I sleep, what are my stressors? So these are things that we’re already doing. So we’re just saying you already eat, just eat the right way. The people listening here potentially already exercise, so just do it the way you’re supposed to do it, right? You’re already going to go buy a cleaning detergent and a wipe or a napkin, buy the right one that maybe doesn’t have the chemicals in it, doesn’t have the forever chemicals or the phthalates or whatever your body can’t cope with, right? So we’re talking about It’s funny because when we talk about the things you need to do, it sounds like dieting or becoming organic or clean. All we’re saying is go back to what our ancestors did before all of this nonsense was introduced to humanity. That’s the way we used to live, right? Yes, there’s some nuances of what’s right for me and what to prioritize. And that’s why it’s important, because we know it is hard to change everything. Your kids still have to go to birthday parties. They’re still going to end up in school. So there’s the practical reality. And that’s why Prioritizing is the key. Here’s the number one job that my body doesn’t do. I’m going to focus on this. Let me fix my sleep. Forget about everything else. I’m going to fix my sleep. Once I do that, move on to something else. Small, small steps, tiny habits.

Guy (34:06):
Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. It really does, doesn’t it? And as you feel the shifts coming, you get inspired to accelerate that process. That’s what happened for me personally. I mean, myself and my wife, we went through, Alex, she’s got a low-tox program, and she went through most of it, and I just listened to what I was told about five years ago, and removing all toxins from our home. And it was, I could not believe the impact it had. It was mind-blowing over time. And then when you step back into that, you’re like, wow, like you really notice it.

Kashif (34:44):
So I can tell you a story about that. Some time ago, when the NASA space station was fairly new, the astronauts that were sent up to live there were complaining about brain fog, memory issues, headaches. And so the scientists said, well, what does it have to do with gravity? Is there something, is there radiation out in space? Like what’s going on that’s causing them to feel this way? So they couldn’t figure it out. They finally sent some environmental health type people up there. They said, let’s figure out what’s going on. And what they realized is the shuttle itself was off because it’s plastic foams, etc. is what it’s made out of. It’s off gassing all these chemicals back into the cabin space that these guys were breathing. And these toxins were causing neural inflammation, which led to brain fog, you know, mood issues, low energy, all of the things that are associated with neural inflammation. So what did they do? They put houseplants in every room. because houseplants take the toxic nonsense, convert it to oxygen and put it back in the air. That’s it. That’s all they did. Right. And we aren’t told this. You go to a doctor today with brain fog, headaches, mood issues. You’re told how many pills you need to take. Right. And so, yes, if you detoxify your environment, It makes a massive impact, especially your home and your bed. If you’re sleeping on a mattress with fire retardants and chemicals and memory foam and it’s off-gassing, off-gassing, and you’re breathing that seven, eight, nine hours, don’t expect to be healthy for very long, right? Switch it out for something organic and clean. Controlling your environment is in your control. So replace bad stuff with good stuff.

Guy (36:30):
Yeah, yeah, totally. Wow. I did not know that. That’s amazing, isn’t it? That’s simple. So when it even comes to exercise, should some people be lifting more weight? Some people should just be walking and not running and things like that. Is that what you find as well?

Kashif (36:47):
The key to that, there’s two areas to look at the genetics of recovery. and oxidative stress, and the genetics of hormones. So step one, hormones, if I have your DNA, I don’t ever need to meet you or see you to tell you what your body looks like. I already know if you’re more pear-shaped, plump, curvaceous, or if you’re more wiry, thin, you know, more pronounced jawline. It’s hormonally driven. Your hormones are instructions telling your body how to develop. And based on your homework cascade, it’s very clear what you look like. Even your ability to burn fat, retain lean muscle. Do you look more like a basketball player or more like a deadlifter than this 400 pounds? All of that is genetic. So that’s step one. Step two is recovery. If you’re putting yourself into oxidative stress, how efficiently does your body deal with the oxidants, the byproducts of using oxygen as fuel? Some of us don’t do that so well, which then becomes a load on the mitochondria, which then causes us to age faster, which causes us to be more susceptible to viral infections and less able to recover because the cells are not in a thrive state anymore. Knowing that, you can plan, here’s what my workout should look like. Some people can run on the treadmill and recover, some people can’t. Some people are told by their doctor, you need to exercise because of your heart. Well, they may be of the genetics that the exercise they’re doing is going to cause them a heart disease. And it’s completely counterintuitive, but it’s true for some people. It’s also where are you exercising? Some people will go choose to golf and they’ll breathe in toxic pesticides for four or five hours without the genetic ability to clear it. Our genetics are different around detoxification. I do a really good job of blocking airborne toxins from entering my body. The GSTP1 gene, I have the best version of it. So they don’t enter when I breathe. My gut has zero detox gene, missing. So my threat is food, right? My good friend was on Lipitor, a cholesterol statin, right, cholesterol pill. And the two things that I told him to do were stop golfing so much without taking detox supplements and stop playing tennis three days a week. Switch to weight training. Why? Because he was missing this key detox gene that allows you to prevent airborne toxins from entering and he’s breathing in this golf three, four, five times a week, the golf pesticides. He also, the SOD2 gene, which determines if you take an oxygen at the cell to create energy and you create an oxidant, how efficiently do you deal with that? He was minus 70% and he’s playing tennis three days a week, oxygen, oxygen, oxygen, breathing heavy, right? So it was aging him and it was causing inflammation to his arteries. The inner lining of the artery is called the endothelium. where the blood actually touches, we can genetically predict what quality of hardware you have, and he had the worst possible quality. He’s taking in all these chemicals, he’s creating oxidants from his tennis, he has bad hardware here, but this gets inflamed first. It wasn’t his brain, it wasn’t his prostate, it was this, because this is where he had the worst hardware. The body then responds to inflammation by deploying cholesterol. It actually uses cholesterol as a tool to reduce the inflammation. The cholesterol meets the oxidant that he caused from playing tennis and it hardened and it deposits and oxidizes itself. And then all of a sudden, one day a doctor says, there’s a marker in your blood that’s off reacting to a symptom. Here’s a pill you need to take without ever asking, why did this happen? Right? So it, yeah, it becomes very clear what habits can make you sick, what habits can make you thrive. And none of these diseases need to happen.

Guy (40:38):
Everybody needs to hear what you just said. How do you get that message out?

Kashif (40:44):
So that’s what we’re doing now. We went from research to, wow, we know something now, to now advocacy. This is what I’m doing. The first question you asked me about what do I tell a person on the airplane, You know, it’s no longer like, here’s what our business does. It’s like, you need to know this now and change everything you do. And I’m out there speaking, writing, podcasting, wherever I can, just so that people know.

Guy (41:09):
Yeah. Do you have kids?

Kashif (41:11):
Yeah. And I run all their DNA. Three of them. And they’re fed different. They’re disciplined different. They’re in different sports because I know who they are genetically. You know, I know that when this particular child, when I talk to him and discipline him, he binds trauma and he remembers negative emotions. It’s very difficult for him to not ignore negative emotions. So I have to be very careful how I discipline. It’s more logical coaching experience as opposed to a disciplinary experience. The other one needs a lot of structure because his neurochemical clearance is too slow. So he gets stuck in a binge mode. It’s very hard for him to move on to the next task or follow self-discipline and self-structure. So he needs a calendar with alerts and alarms. Otherwise, he’s just not going to do it. When he does it, he does a really good job because he’s a binger. High quality, in-depth work. But getting him to start is a challenge. So now I know again, it’s not a book about parenting. It’s like, here’s what this kid needs, exactly what this kid needs to be their best.

Guy (42:18):
Wow. That’s incredible. That’s incredible. Because I have a three year old daughter and a son on the way, like three months time, number two is coming as well. Wow. Powerful. I want to ask you a question. It’s more of just a selfish question, but I’m sure this is, and I might completely stuff it up as well. The things that you’re talking about are definitely beyond my skill set when you start getting technical. With cells, DNA, genetics, like I mentioned off earlier, I had an awakening about eight, nine years ago, and I felt a level of energy go through my body that was quite remarkable that I didn’t even know the body was possible. And between then and now, and incorporating many lifestyle factors, I’ve clearly felt a sensitivity or change when it comes to myself. I can’t even put it into words. And as people have experienced it, it’s really hard to articulate that. With everything you do, I’m just even, because I even hear the term junk DNA and what’s, I don’t even know what the potential is. Is there any way or is technology leading us to where we could start to measure those shifts as well, even like levels of awareness within consciousness, within the body, within cells?

Kashif (43:50):
So there’s a couple layers there. One is our DNA, our genes, which are the instructions, those don’t change. But our epigenetics is constantly changing. What is epigenetics? Here’s a gene, for example, that makes me convert my testosterone into estrogen. And maybe I have the fast version of that gene. So maybe as a woman, it’s hard for me to lose weight and I have anxiety issues. Now, I know that there’s certain supplements like DIMM, for example, which is a broccoli extract, that actually slow the CYP19A1 gene down. So I can change its expression. I have the fast version, and by eating this food, it slows it down as if I had the slow version. And all of a sudden, my fat starts to melt. And all of a sudden, I don’t have the anxiety. And my menstrual cycle is a little easier to deal with. That’s genetic expression. But that requires constant management, because you have a certain version of the gene, and you have to constantly be adding this input of this ingredient to make it express slower, which means it’s a daily ongoing supplement protocol. That’s how we experience things in the here and now every day, but we also have permanent inherited epigenetic expression changes. And a very famous example is the grandchildren of the Holocaust survivors that live in the U.S. have this random and rare overexpression of neurochemicals around fear, trauma, and anxiety. which is still, they don’t have the baseline genetic foundational issue. They’re over and under expressing because that what their grandparents went through was so impactful that they inherited the genetic ability to cope with that. their body is still designed to deal with that problem, which they’re not in anymore. And so I’ll give them that wiring and put them in an office. They all of a sudden seem neurotic. They seem overly sensitive, you know, because they’re wired for that. And they’re not doing that anymore. So those are the three layers of genetics, hard wiring and code. Epigenetics, I can tweak that. And that’s all of what we’ve been talking about today. Let me augment things so I get to where I need to be. And then there’s inherited. epigenetic, which can be anything. It’s whatever impactful, significant things your ancestors did, you’re going to inherit the ability to cope with that without your DNA even changing. And why does it happen that way? Because it’s not permanent. When you live your life differently, the expression changes back to give your next heirs what they need. Right? Right. That’s the sort of, there’s so much more you can talk about, but that’s the sort of baseline.

Guy (46:37):
Yeah.

Kashif (46:38):
So what is junk DNA then? It’s basically empty code, like dead spots in the DNA. Funny thing is that there’s a lot of it, right? So there’s regions of genetics that are just not coded. So imagine you’re reading a book and every second page is blank. And not only is it blank, but the story didn’t continue. There’s actually a page missing, not just blank. So there’s a bunch of junk DNA. We don’t know what it does. We don’t know why it’s there. There’s some theories in terms of, if you look at our DNA, we have not changed for about 250,000 years. That means that Our genetics has not evolved. There’s no evolution been happening. It’s just a random, you know, sort of Russian roulette of here’s different versions of these genes and we keep getting different versions during different generations. But it also, it always reverts back to the same two or three options, right? There’s no change happening, it’s just options. So the way that happened is 250,000 years ago, there was a change in our DNA. meaning that we used to be something else, and now we became who we are. And we today don’t have the technology to do that, by the way. We don’t know how to do that. But it’s very clear, there’s a couple chromosomes that are like pinched and been augmented. How that happened, we don’t know, but it happened. And we became who we are. And now all of a sudden we have wiring for people, our ancestor and lineage of 250,000 years. Our body still thinks we’re like cave people. from that era. So now if you look at all that, you start to ask more esoteric type questions like where did we come from, who are we, right? Who programmed this in our DNA? All of a sudden we have the ability for complex speech and to feel in-depth emotions and sing and our brains folded so that there’s more surface area and we can have more intellect than other species. This kind of just happened. And evolution doesn’t happen that way. So where and why, I’m working on that now, but I don’t know if in my lifetime there’ll be an answer, but there’s certainly more than what we think.

Guy (48:55):
Yeah, without a doubt. So those blank pages, then, what is your feeling? Could they be encoded?

Kashif (49:02):
Is there… Yeah, and that’s what I’m getting to, is that, and I missed that part, sorry, which is… It’s okay. Yeah. Because we feel like there’s a very intentional edit, Now, remember I said earlier the telomeres. Are the telomeres there to protect the DNA, or are they there to cap the DNA? Is it that we were… Are we protecting the 120 years, or are we limiting ourselves to 120 years? Is there a potential for more? And if you look at a lot of ancient texts and religions, they all talk about people that live 4, 5, 6, 7, 900 years consistently. And there’s a new generation that came along, which is us, quarter million years, that doesn’t live that long anymore. And this is where there’s… What is DNA? It’s code. It’s instruction that tells your cells what to do. So if the DNA was edited and there was a cap put on it, were their pages removed? certain functions, we only use a tiny fraction of our brain, so why is it there? Is there code missing that unlocks certain functionality that previous ancestry had access to? It seems like that’s what’s happening with junk DNA. Why is there all this code just gone? And by the way, the majority of it, we’re not talking about a small percentage, a majority percentage is missing. So we think we’re capable of so much more. So this hardware that we walk around with does not have the software to utilize it fully. That’s what’s happening.

Guy (50:38):
Totally. Wow. You definitely leave people pondering on questions there. That’s for sure with that. And there’s a couple of things with me after those experiences. I started having experiences that were beyond anything I’d experienced prior, if that makes sense. So there has to be a shift within me to be able to receive that information that’s coming in.

Kashif (50:59):
I’ve been through the same. This sort of sense of elevation and consciousness. right where your relationship with the fabric of the universe changes and what you desire and what your purpose is changes what’s a priority and who’s a priority changes right so uh and there’s no other way to describe that than elevated consciousness so your purpose has changed and now if you look at the dna um it is actually a signaling tool so if you picture dna we know the spiral right the dna spiral it looks like a ladder that’s been twisted so where the rungs meet these sidebars those locations are actual signaling sites When we talk about manifesting and praying, this is… Antennas? Antennas, yeah. Not to receive, to send. Your mitochondria receives. So when you’re standing there and you can sense somebody’s walking up behind me, you know. That’s your mitochondria. Your mitochondria, which is inside yourself, receives signals constantly to signal to your body what to do. Is there a lion chasing me? Are we getting ready to eat me? Do I need an adrenaline response right now? Do I need hormones boosted? So your mitochondria is constantly serving everything around you to signal every cellular function so that you survive. Your DNA, on the other hand, is constantly putting signals out into the fabric to manifest what you need and want to come back to you. And this is why there’s this sense of you have to believe it for it to happen. It can’t be a maybe. When you truly believe it, you can send the signal. And this is why once you reach a certain level of health, and you’ll find that so many people reach this through a health journey, because what happens with poor health is you start to oxidize the cell and you start to oxidize and damage the DNA. And if you’re taking the innate hardware of your antenna that’s supposed to send these signals out and you damage it, you can’t send the signals out anymore. If you’re eating garbage food, and you’re oxidized, and you’re inflamed, the system doesn’t work. And then all of a sudden, you get healthy. And you start to meditate. You start to eat properly. And you start to exercise. You detoxify. And there’s this connection. What just happened? I feel like a different, it’s not just I feel healthy, I feel connected. Because you can. The tool was in you, and you weren’t able to use it, because you were so unhealthy, and the DNA was damaged and oxidized. And now it repaired. The tool is now available to you, and all of a sudden, what you want just falls in your lap. right, if you truly believe it, because that’s the only way to send a signal out.

Guy (53:37):
Totally. Wow. Because I honestly, like when we hold space in a room, when you’ve got 100 people in a room, and they’re all meditating, there’s a collective It’s like an emerging coherence of energy, a rhythm that comes from it. It’s quite unique. And what I found from having the fortune of being in that space hundreds and hundreds of times now, not only from our experience, but a whole, there’s like an entrainment that is continuing to happen. And that sending and receiving continues to improve. That’s the only way I can put it. So there’s like a muscle that’s developed there.

Kashif (54:14):
Because you go down this path, like you said earlier, once you enjoy the success of good habits, you do not need the joy from pleasure anymore. Because you need a dopamine hit. Dopamine is what makes us progress as humanity. But you don’t need both. Dopamine is powered by both pleasure and reward. Eat some tasty food, achieve some success. Both give you dopamine hit. And once you start to get your dopamine from reward, you don’t need the pleasure anymore. And what happens, you start to remove all the nasty things that hurt you. And all of a sudden you start to get into this vicious cycle forward of elevating your health and your consciousness. And it’s a byproduct of being healthy. You also drive your hormone levels to where they should be. When you look at men today, they don’t look like men of last generation. They’re overly estrogenized, their hormones are out of whack. Women have so many more hormone issues than any generation prior to because they’re also hormone disrupted. When you drive forward and push yourself, fight, your testosterone levels automatically go up. When your testosterone levels automatically go up, they cause you to want to fight and move forward. And there’s this vicious cycle of more testosterone, drive, drive more testosterone. And the opposite is also true. When you lean back and worry, you get more estrogenized. And that causes you to want to lean back and worry. And then you go on a vicious cycle backwards. So when you are healthy and you have purpose, you start to fight for things, everything gets better. Hormones, your cells, your mood and behavior, even your nutrition, fueling sort of efficient energy as opposed to spikes and glycemic index problems, all of it gets better.

Guy (55:59):
Yeah, wow. This podcast has been incredible, mate. If people listening to this are not motivated by the end of this, this podcast, I don’t know what’s going to motivate them, I can tell you. You have to listen to everything you just shared. So just as we tie up the podcast, what can people do? They listen to this, they go, holy shit, my kids are running wild. I can’t ever control them. My health is definitely something’s going on. What’s the protocol in terms of just next steps?

Kashif (56:30):
So the test is at the DNA company.com. And, you know, I want to honor everybody for being here today. And what I’ll do, we didn’t do this yet, but I’ll get it set up. Let’s set up the DNA company.com forward slash let in, or let it sorry, let it in. Sorry, skipped over there, let it in, right. And we’ll make sure that you get a discount. So we’ll set that up for everybody. And that way, I just want to honor everybody taking the time here. And it sounds like your community is already thinking the right way. So let’s get you engaged, right? From there, we have these report review sessions where you can actually show up with your data and we as a group go through them and learn more. And there’s a lot of cool stuff that happens there. So, it’s really that simple. Your DNA report is going to tell you about all these core substances we talked about. Hormones, neurochemicals, macronutrients, micronutrients. What B vitamins do you need? What vitamin D levels do you need? You know, what’s going on with your sleep? All of it can be fixed and all of a sudden you start to become the best version of yourself. And all of a sudden you can start thinking about longevity and how do I live to 120? And how do I play with my grandchildren as opposed to watching them from the couch? You know, so it’s all possible. I’m living proof of it. When we started this journey, I was 38. And I tested my biological age, so there’s a way to look at internal biological markers, including epigenetic expression and your aortic stiffness and various things like that. I was 43 on the inside. So I was five years older than myself, right? Now, I actually am 43, by the way. It’s been five years since I started this research. And biologically, I’m 33. So I’ve been able to reverse time. And I’m working, I’m not going to end there. I’m working on taking it even further if I can, right? As I’m chronologically aging, I’m trying to slow down the clock, not because I care to be on this planet for more time, but just because I want to show the world what’s possible. And you don’t need to age at that pace. You don’t need to be sick. You don’t need to have migraines, et cetera. So this is what’s possible. The tools are rooted in personalization. What habits do I need to make? I’m going to make choices every day. I should always make the right choice. That’s all we’re trying to teach people. Beautiful.

Guy (58:49):
And is measuring biological age easy to do as well?

Kashif (58:53):
Yeah, we actually offer that. We only used it as a research tool up until recently. It’s actually launching September 1st. So, so many people are asking. We never intended to sort of sell it per se. But if you go after September 1st, I believe it should be on the website.

Guy (59:11):
Yeah. Okay. Beautiful. Where can we send them? Can you just say the URL out loud as well? Yeah. It’ll be a link in there.

Kashif (59:19):
Yeah. TheDNAcompany.com forward slash let it in. Beautiful. Right. Let’s do that. Yeah.

Guy (59:27):
I appreciate it. I’ll be linking the show notes. So, mate, last question for you. After everything we’ve covered today, what would you like to leave the listeners to ponder on?

Kashif (59:38):
Well, I want everyone to rethink what disease is and know that chronic disease, the pace at which you age, and the way you feel today are all optional. There’s no such thing as diseases coming as it’s in my family. It is optional. It’s caused. And when you start to understand that, every choice you make every day, you start to recognize is a choice towards good health or a choice away from it. Every time you put something in your mouth, every time you talk to somebody, every time you breathe something, there was a choice to add yours or remove yours. And that’s how finicky our body is, but that’s also how empowered you are, because it’s both ways, right? So just know that and start thinking consciously about every choice you make. Every time you lift a fork, every time you go to a location, every time you spend more time with the wrong person, what is it doing to your health and longevity? And know that that was a conscious choice. So start to make the right choices.

Guy (01:00:39):
Yeah, beautiful. Mate, I can feel your passion, jumped it through the screen. I just want to say thank you for coming on the show today. I loved every minute of it and got a huge amount out of it myself as well. And no doubt if people are still listening, they would feel the same way as well. So thanks for everything you’re doing, mate.

Kashif (01:00:57):
Good to be with you.