Asking for a Friend - Health, Fitness & Personal Growth Tips for Women in Midlife

Ep.138 Unlocking DNA Secrets: Elwin Robinson on Genetic Testing, Personalized Health, and Wellness Strategies

• Michele Henning Folan • Episode 138

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What if unlocking the secrets of your own DNA could revolutionize your approach to health and wellness? Join us as we venture into the world of genetic-based health insights with Elwin Robinson, founder of Genetic Insights. Elwin shares his compelling journey into genetic testing, propelled by personal health struggles that traditional and alternative medicine couldn't resolve. Raised in a family where both conventional and alternative health practices coexisted, Elwin's unique perspective on wellness has led him to create a platform that brings the power of genetic testing to your fingertips, offering a transformative approach to understanding your health.

In our conversation, Elwin discusses how Genetic Insights makes genetic testing accessible and affordable, empowering individuals with personalized risk scores and wellness strategies for chronic health issues. Discover how this user-friendly platform helps uncover root causes often overlooked by traditional practitioners, focusing on key health aspects like detoxification, heart health, and blood sugar balance. We also touch upon the broader complexities of health, highlighting the interplay between genetic predispositions and environmental factors. From addressing obesity to improving digestive health, Elwin's insights illuminate the path to informed health actions based on one's unique genetic profile.

As we conclude our enlightening discussion, Elwin emphasizes the critical importance of privacy and data security in the genetic testing industry. With strict measures in place at Genetic Insights Co., customer data remains secure, ensuring peace of mind for users exploring genetic insights as a tool for unresolved health concerns. Whether you're intrigued by the promise of longevity or curious about your genetic predispositions, this episode offers a fresh perspective on the power of understanding your DNA, encouraging listeners to embrace a personalized approach to health and wellness.

Elwin Robinson and Genetic Insights has offered a 25% discount for Asking for a Friend listeners. Use code Friend25 for 25% off a genetic report.
Complete access to over 500 Genetic Reports giving Personalized Risk Scores on Common Health Issues and Nutrient Deficiencies

You can find Elwin Robinson at https://geneticinsights.co
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Michele Folan:

Health, wellness, fitness and everything in between. We're removing the taboo from what really matters in midlife. I'm your host, Michele Folan, and this is Asking for a Friend. Today we're thrilled to welcome Elwin Robinson, founder of Genetic Insights. After facing severe health challenges that traditional and alternative medicine couldn't solve, Elwin turned to genetic testing, sparking a revolutionary approach to health and wellness. His company now empowers individuals by providing personalized genetic-based health insights. Elwin's passion lies in unlocking the secrets of our DNA to improve our quality of life, making him a true pioneer in the field of genetics and rejuvenation. Elwyn Robinson, welcome to Asking for a Friend.

Elwin Robinson:

Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, it's really nice to see you, and I always start off my conversations with you adding in tidbits about yourself, where you're from, where you went to school and anything else you'd like to share.

Elwin Robinson:

I was originally born in Holland to a Dutch mother and an English father. I grew up in England from the age of four. Yeah, I don't know. What else do you want to know?

Michele Folan:

Family.

Elwin Robinson:

Yes, both my parents were very unhealthy and both my parents were into alternative health, so that really sparked my interest in it. My mother had cancer several times and tumors several more times and she went the conventional route but also the alternative route. So my house was filled of supplements. Our house was almost like like a library it's just full of books and all kinds of books and alternative health stuff. And then my dad was more of a practical guy, so at one point he was a rural science teacher. Another point he had an organic farm. Another point he was, uh, like an organic market stall. This is back in the 80s, right right when this was fairly unusual. So yeah, and he was a biochemist. So you could say that health or lack of health, both of them are a little bit in my DNA.

Michele Folan:

Well, that's super interesting because you don't hear that very often. Typically you hear people were not trying to live really a healthy lifestyle, trying to live really a healthy lifestyle back then. So that is unusual. But you have your own personal health story that I think drove you to where you are today. What was it that was going on with you that propelled you into action?

Elwin Robinson:

Well, like I said, I've always thought that I didn't have very healthy genes because both my parents were very unhealthy. My mother died fairly young of cancer and my dad he had, you know, me, and he permanently retired as a teacher because of it and uh. But you know, with all that health stuff, I was a rebellious person. So I rebelled against that and, you know, did the normal stuff that kit does of you know, partying and and whatnot. And then in my late 20s I started to get ill as well, like the early signs of ME. So I was like, okay, I've got to turn this around and stop behaving this way. And I was feeling better for quite a while.

Elwin Robinson:

And then I was also in the health industry. You know I was doing talks around the world and all that kind of stuff and I thought I had it all figured out, michelle, until I got to almost 40 years old and then suddenly I started to suffer with a debilitating pain condition that affected my digestive system around my solar plexus on the right-hand side, and all the kind of usual health advice that I thought would prevent or treat something like that didn't work and I went to conventional medical doctors several of them, you know, public, then private paid for all kinds of tests. None of those helped. I went to functional medicine, nutritionists, naturopaths, all those kind of people and I learned some interesting stuff about myself along the way, but none them helped and by this time I was really struggling.

Elwin Robinson:

I had always been underweight and had some degree of digestive issues. That was the one like the bane of my existence. Um, like, by far. I just had food allergies. So if I just ate a certain way, I was okay. But I got to the point where anything I ate would create this severe stabbing pain and painkillers did not work. In fact they made it worse. So normal painkillers didn't work, which is not that unusual. But normally then you put someone on opiate painkillers if the normal ones don't work, but those ones actually made the pain significantly worse, which is an unusual situation.

Michele Folan:

That is weird.

Elwin Robinson:

Maybe a mixed blessing, because it stopped me getting addicted to them. But yeah, I lost a lot of weight. I'm six foot three. I got down to about 120 pounds.

Michele Folan:

Oh Lord, this is not through stopping myself eating.

Elwin Robinson:

This was, you know, because it was so painful. Every time I did eat and I would say I suffered from a lot of things that result from, you know, malnutrition. So I was cold all the time. I started to have severe anxiety. I couldn't sleep.

Elwin Robinson:

I was extremely kind of hypersensitive to both stress, psychological stress, but also just substances, you know, anything toxic in the environment I was reacting to and I was in a bit of a sorry state and so, you know, and I couldn't work much. So I really I tried everything, I went into a lot of other avenues. I thought, okay, well, maybe it's a more of a structural issue, because it is, you know, around the rib cage. And so I went to see people like physical therapists, chiropractors, craniosacral therapists, osteopaths, all those kind of people, and again, I learned lots of interesting stuff, but nothing actually helped. And then I started to think maybe this is all in in my head, especially when, repeatedly, doctors would look at me as if they thought it was all in my head. No one actually said that. So I was like, okay, so I started to learn about the placebo effect and the nocebo effect and I started to see a normal therapist and I started to do meditation every day and all of that kind of stuff.

Elwin Robinson:

And again, all that was probably very beneficial, but none of it actually worked for this issue. In fact, a lot of time it made it worse and I'd paid for a lot of testing by then, both with different practitioners and on my own, and I just stumbled across this thing that said, have you ever done a genetic test before? You can take your, your raw dna, your results from that and upload it to this and it will give you all kinds of insights about your health based on your genetics. And I was like you know, I'm going to try it. So I tried it and for me it was a revelation. Unfortunately, it didn't immediately tell me what was wrong in my case, but it gave me the clues that I needed to finally work out what was going on and actually to resolve it.

Michele Folan:

So what were the clues? What did you pick up from this testing?

Elwin Robinson:

Yeah, a few things. So first of all, I didn't know, because it's in that area and I hadn't been able to finally think. But it's like is it the intestines? Is it the liver? Is it the gallbladder? Is it none of those things? Is it the ribs?

Elwin Robinson:

So, like helping me narrow down, and it said I have a very high genetic risk top 99th percentile for something called cholestasis. And so cholestasis is where the bile doesn't flow properly. It becomes too thick and it gets stuck, and bile is a very highly toxic substance and it can be very corrosive if a lot of toxicity builds up in it. And so that was like a clue that that might be where the pain was localized. And I've had a couple of people say it looks like the gallbladder before, but I'd had so many opinions I didn't know what was what. And I also had a top 1% genetic risk for cholecystitis, which is an infection of the gallbladder. But now when they tested me, they didn't find that. But I was like, okay, seems to be gallbladder-ish gallbladder-related, seems to be gallbladder-ish gallbladder-related. And then there were various things that also predisposed me to that, like a genetically increased need for choline. Choline is one of the nutrients that your body should make itself, but you need sufficient amounts in order to keep the bile flowing. And then so that was one element of it, and so I eventually, through that, discovered that I had, like the actual diagnosis of what I have is called sphincter of OD dysfunction.

Elwin Robinson:

It's basically this bile duct. It goes into spasm and the mainstream medical community doesn't know why it happens, but they know it happens and it's agonizingly painful. It happens far more in women than men. Like 98% of the time it's women, which is no surprise, and they didn't suspect it in my case and they don't really know what caused it. It's something like IBS. It's a syndrome. They don't really understand it, but my understanding was that the toxicity will, if it's sufficient, it will cause that muscle to go into spasm, which then means that the gallbladder can't release. This bile starts building up in the gallbladder, so it starts like inflating, like a balloon, building up pressure, and that's what that very unique, unpleasant, uh pain okay, yeah, wow, that's super interesting.

Michele Folan:

I want to back up real quick because I took it. I made a little note here. You said that your dad had me. What does that stand for?

Elwin Robinson:

chronic fatigue syndrome is the more okay term for it. Okay, chronic fatigue.

Michele Folan:

Okay. So I just wanted to ask that, just in case someone says what was he talking about? So, with this new knowledge that you could do this DNA testing, how did you jump into this? Because you've made a career out of this now.

Elwin Robinson:

Yes, well, like I kind of skimmed over before, I already had a supplement store for a long time at this point, selling herbs, actually mainly for quite a while, and nutrients and stuff like that, and I was totally in it. This is what I'm saying. I hadn't really emphasized this, but I was living a healthier lifestyle than 99% of people before this happened. I never drank alcohol, I never smoked, I never took drugs, I never had sugar, I never had fast food, and when I say never, I mean never. I was always, you know, I exercised every day, I did breathing practice, I did regular yoga, like I was really living this healthy lifestyle. And yeah, you know, I took herbs, I took supplements, I did cleanses regularly, I did fasting all of that stuff you're supposed to do in what I call mainstream alternative health world. That's supposed to keep you healthy. So I was really into all that stuff and I taught it. So I had a bit of an audience already.

Elwin Robinson:

But obviously, as soon as I started to get sick I'm not teaching anything, I don't want to be hypocritical, I've got my own problem but when I started to get better, that's the first of all I test, let's see if I'm a fluke, let's see if this is just a random chance. So I got my wife to do it, I got several more business partners to do it, I got most of my employees to do it, I got most of my trainers to do it, some family members to do it, and so I'd seen, by this time I'd gone through a couple of dozen people and I was like just consistently, uh, blown away at how accurate it was, how how helpful it was. You know, I accrued a few stories of other people who had big turnarounds as a result of it and I was like, huh, I and it was great, but I found that I actually needed to go through people's results with them, otherwise they couldn't understand it. And because the the portal that I was using is kind of practitioner focused, I would say, even though it wasn't technically only for practitioners most, a lot of them are only for practitioners and the ones that aren't quite difficult for normal people to understand. So I approached them and I said would I be able to work with you guys, license it, and so it'd be the same results, same accuracy and all rest, but it would be simpler for people to go. It's still not super simple, as you've seen, but it is simpler for the average person to go through and understand themselves and this is the other distinction make it cheaper.

Elwin Robinson:

So I wanted to democratize it so anyone at least with a Western world income could afford it. And so there's an absurd overcharging, honestly, in this industry I was just talking about a couple of days ago with a couple of medical doctors. Sometimes they pay hundreds or hundreds of dollars for like one gene or one SNP, one marker, and I said to them look in our system we have 200 million SNPs that we analyze and we can give you results on Like. We provide so much information but, as I said, it was still fairly expensive so I wanted it available. So you know, with our system, jetikinsightsco, especially with you know, I usually give out a discount code when I go on podcasts like this.

Elwin Robinson:

You know you can get access to everything for under $150. So it's a vast amount of information, as you can see, sometimes it may be too much, but if you know how to go through it which hopefully we'll do a little bit of in this interview it's a vast amount of information categorized in a way that you know is manageable to go through it and it's extremely affordable, and that was really my goal. Like that, everyone would be able to use that.

Michele Folan:

So for what types of health issues do you think most people are trying to find answers for? Do you have a sense?

Elwin Robinson:

Yeah, good question. It's going to be chronic, not acute, right? If someone starts to feel that stabbing pain, like I had, the first port of call should not be genetic results, it should be going to a medical doctor. It's only where practitioners have failed you or maybe you're now managing it and you're treating it, but you want to see if there are some underlying causes, you can find an address and stuff like that. So I'd say all the chronic issues I would especially say in my experience, the chronic issues that most practitioners are not interested in discovering the root causes.

Elwin Robinson:

For you know that's my real mission. That was born during that time is to and genetics is really only a part of it is to help people identify and resolve the root causes of chronic disease. And in fact you know they are all there and identify seven areas that you need to look at. And so if someone comes to me and they don't have a specific problem but they just want to look through their genetics, then that's often what I'll do. I'll just look at the seven potential root causes of all chronic disease and let's have a look and see what we can do about those.

Michele Folan:

So this is like where you can get almost like a personalized risk score. Is that kind of what that is?

Elwin Robinson:

You can get many, many, many, many personalized risk scores in our system. Yeah, so some of them are more general, like there's one just for detoxification, there's one just for heart health, or there's one just for blood sugar balance, or there's just one just for hormones, but then within that there'll also be one report on every hormone and one report on all the kind of common permutations of blood sugars, hypoglycemia or insulin resistance or metabolic syndrome, whatever. So many many different risk scores? Yes, depending on what you're interested in.

Michele Folan:

And then are there wellness strategies associated with those two.

Elwin Robinson:

Yes, yes.

Michele Folan:

Okay.

Elwin Robinson:

So when I go through them with people, I often don't spend too much time looking at this because they you know people generally want like a meta zoomed out perspective of what to focus on and stuff. But what you know people have access to is a membership portal and then you can kind of just skim through and see, oh, I have a higher risk of this or a lower risk of this, and that can be enough for a practitioner itself to say, okay, I could do further testing on this, because there's a higher risk of this, for instance. But for an end user, a client, a patient, whatever, what I strongly recommend is, when you find an area that you're either concerned about or maybe that you already have, is to actually download the report and read it. And the first part of the report is just always the same. It's just a general introduction to make sure people understand it, and also, if you forward it to someone else, they know what they're looking at.

Elwin Robinson:

Then it gives you the score, but that's only like one or two pages, but then the majority of the report, which is all the rest of it, is recommendations, and the recommendations are based on your genetics and you'll see there's like almost every sentence in there has scientific citations. So this is something that you can forward to you know a medical professional and they may still not. Some of them only are into their own thing, right? I've seen too many doctors who don't care about the opinion of other doctors, let alone genetic reports. But if it's a reasonably over-minded doctor and there are plenty of them this is not pseudoscience, right, they can look at it and they go okay. So you know this is what it's based on. Here are the scientific citations. So, anyway, for the recommendations, yeah, sometimes there's only a few, sometimes there's loads we Sometimes there's only a few, sometimes there's loads we limit it to 20 just so people don't feel overwhelmed. But it will say you know, in their lifestyle, dietary and supplement recommendations of things that can make a difference based on the person's genetics.

Michele Folan:

Now, when we're going to take a quick break, we'll be right back. Yes, it is 2025, and I think I'm just about recovered from the crazy holiday festivities. I also have a wonderful coaching group up and going. You know, every year seems to put people on the starting line of a weight loss journey. We've all been there.

Michele Folan:

What if, when you begin 2026, you aren't feeling compelled to start over or recommit to last year's resolutions? Can we adopt a truly healthy lifestyle that is not only effective but sustainable? If you are open to pushing aside the quick fix mentality for slow, steady and long-term, would you be interested you get to eat all the food groups with your own custom nutrition plan and start to move your body to ensure you are building lean muscle, stability and longevity? Let's get that metabolism fired up, because it is not too late to feel great and be confident and strong. I have another group coaching round starting soon. Are you ready? Reach out via my email in the show notes or DM me on social media. Welcome back to the show everyone. Now, when this comes up a lot on my podcast allergies and food intolerances. This is something that I know. You know if you have a little GI issue or whatever, you're automatically connected to some kind of a food issue. How accurate are these tests in pinpointing the culprit for those types of things?

Elwin Robinson:

The genetic tests. Well, very, but sometimes in a surprising way. So I'll give myself as an example. So, remember, I said like I always had digestive issues and I always had food allergies to all these foods I reacted to. Well, I was very surprised when I looked at my genetic results that it said I didn't have any allergies or intolerances other than, I think, gluten. That was the only one, and I was like huh.

Elwin Robinson:

But at the time, remember, I told you a few years ago I was reacting to almost every food. It would give me stabbing pain. So I thought, well, that sounds like not accurate. But then I actually did an IgG and IgE test for myself and also for my wife and the results came back and it was hilarious. She can pretty much eat anything without having many major issues. And her test said she had all these really strong food allergies, like 100 out of 100, and loads of categories of food. Me, I didn't get anything more than 10 out of 100 in any food. So I was like huh, and so it turned out in that case that it was correct, like, yes, I had reactions to lots of different foods, but it wasn't an immune reaction and of course there are other reasons why people could have reactions when they're eating foods, and one of them is that it's food for various organisms, right? So people have SIBO, they have SIFO small intestine, bacterial or fungal overgrowth, and so if you have those things which I did, then there are all kinds of foods which can create a reaction in you which is not necessarily an allergy and intolerance. So that's an example of you know where it helped me narrow down that in fact it wasn't an allergy or an intolerance, but that's kind of more unusual.

Elwin Robinson:

What I see more commonly is people who have allergies to things and it does show up in their genetics and sometimes they don't realize. And it's really helpful. And you know, we give reports on all the common stuff like eggs, gluten, dairy, whatever, but we also give it on things that people don't think about very often, like histamine intolerance, salicylate sensitivity, oxalate sensitivity, mycotoxin sensitivity, and these are things that are kind of not allergies. Most of what I just listed there. It's more that your body has an issue breaking that thing down, but kind of functionally it's it's the same as an allergy, like you get reaction every time you eat them, kind of thing. And yeah, that can be, you know, often is very, very helpful information for people to know, and especially because often, like salicylate is a common one, like almost every food that contains salicylate is healthy and stuff that a health guru is probably telling you to eat.

Elwin Robinson:

But then I had one client who was like taking aspirin every day because, uh, one health guru said it was a good idea, and then he was having black seed oil every day because another health guru said it was a good idea. And I was like these things are not innately necessarily bad. I mean even salicylate. Salicylic acid is, you know, something that naturally exists in plants, which is the point I was making. One teaspoon of black cumin oil actually has the same amount of salicylic acid, uh, aspirin, as a baby aspirin. So, like there are certain natural foods which are actually really really high in this as well. People with oxalate sensitivity it's amazing. I'm like you know what? You'll be fine, just don't have the highest oxalate foods. Don't have, like, spinach, chocolate, tea, you know, those are like the most high and they're like, oh, I eat all those every day, every meal, of course, and then they try not eating them and they feel, you know, they do feel better.

Michele Folan:

So, yeah, yeah, the spinach one, yeah, and it's. And then you you'd look at the bone health and how oscillates can inhibit your bone health and it's like anyway, yeah, it's a big thing.

Elwin Robinson:

You know, I had a client who had kidney stones and you know oscillate sensitivity. I'm like you really need to take this seriously. This is why you're getting kidney stones.

Michele Folan:

Exactly. Yeah, I know, it's just all the stuff you find out, you know. And speaking of that, we can all go through life and have issues and blame our bad genetics, and I know we can't outrun a bad diet, but what about bad genetics? How much do we blame our genetics for our weight and some of those things?

Elwin Robinson:

I mean, I slightly disagree with you. I know it's not common, but some people can outrun a bad diet. There are some people in their 80s who just eat fast food, junk food, and they have more energy and never had a health issue. And it does happen. And if you ask them, they'll usually say I've got good genes and there's some truth to that. But yeah, I hear what you're saying. It's funny to hear someone who does what I do maybe say this, but I agree that the influence of genetics is overblown in modern day science, for instance.

Elwin Robinson:

You just said you know, you said it's about weight. So we're in an obesity epidemic, right, both in my country and in your country. Your country is a better example because you guys didn't have, you know, like rationing or whatever, like we did 100 years ago. So 100 years ago, I think, the obesity rate in your country is less than 1%. Now it's over 50%. It's terrible. So that can't be only genetics and it can't be primarily genetics. There's something going on there, especially like 100 years ago. You know, the average person in the US was eating about 3000 calories. A decent amount of that was coming from sugar, like maybe 10-20%. A decent amount of that was coming from saturated fat, maybe 20, even 30%, and yet there was no obesity epidemic. And also, people weren't exercising that much even 100 years ago. They tend to have more active jobs, but you know, no one was jogging or whatever. So what is it? And I would say, yeah, absolutely. It's poisons in the environment and our food and stuff like that. It's a whole separate conversation, maybe, but what I will say also is this I've come across people again and again who are really really trying to do all the right things like I was saying I was, but in this case to lose weight, who really struggle, and there is a genetic component to it that, once we discover it, it makes a huge difference. I, I've been like you know, a low thyroid function, for instance, like not so low that the modern medical establishment considers it diagnosable, but suboptimal thyroid function will absolutely mean that your metabolism is slower and that less calories will cause you to gain weight. That is a factor.

Elwin Robinson:

There are all kinds of factors, uh, like carbohydrate metabolism. Some people don't do very well with high levels of carbohydrates and so knowing that and there's, there's a strong genetic component to that, so knowing that about yourself can guide you as to you know what macronutrients to have. I've seen people who there's just specific uh nutrients that they have a genetic need to have more of like I could think of one woman who is happy for me to share a story who needed more uh, iron and b12 genetically. She then tested it and showed that her iron b12 is low not super uncommon in women anyway, but it was, you know and then she increased it and she lost about 40 pounds in weight. Oh my gosh, just from doing that. Wow, and why would that be? Well, again, metabolism is dependent on a lot of things, not just thyroid, and obviously you need sufficient mild anemia that hadn't been picked up. So you need enough iron and B12 to transport oxygen to the mitochondria in your cells for the metabolism to work correctly, and if that's not the case, then the metabolism can be slow and a person just can't lose weight. And that's a handful I can talk about.

Elwin Robinson:

There's at least a dozen genetic factors that I commonly check. Insulin resistance is another one, and then people have a tendency to that. This goes back to how much is genes and how much is um lifestyle, and I've never seen a clean, perfect genetic profile meaning every single person I look at. There's loads of things they're high risk at, there's loads of potential problems that they have, and so the crucial distinction is the healthier person's. The crucial distinction is the healthier a person's lifestyle and diet and all the rest of it for them.

Elwin Robinson:

And there is variation in that, as we gave a couple of examples of the less they will express. All their high-risk things, right Right, are poisoned. And there was a poisoning aspect to my health issue as well, which I uh, which I didn't go into, but let's say, you know, they're poisoned by modern, sad diet, the, the, whatever some people, it'll mean that they gain weight and can't gain weight. In my case it meant I lost weight and couldn't put on weight. Uh, you know, for some people it all manifests as depression. For some people it manifests as kidney stones. For some people it all manifests as kidney stones. For some people it will manifest in, I won't go on, but all kinds of different issues. And so the genetics just tells us when we're suboptimal, when we're not at our best, where does it show up for you? And weight is one area that commonly shows up, because there are numerous mechanisms that can make that happen.

Michele Folan:

So we talked a lot about food and lifestyle. But what about environmental factors? Do you ever pick stuff up like that yeah, it could be things in the air or that kind of. Give me an example A hundred percent.

Elwin Robinson:

Well, I'll give the example then. That was my the other big piece of the puzzle for me. So the symptoms I had would indicate some kind of toxicity as well. At the time A lot of practitioners said that you know, one of them, for instance, really thought it was mycotoxins, which is mold toxins, but that wasn't significant and I'd already done a hair minerals test and I'd already done a heavy metals urinary test and none of them had come up with anything. So every practitioner, and everyone I've spoken to since, on podcasts like this as well, agrees with this. At that point no one would bother testing for heavy metals.

Elwin Robinson:

Once all that had come back, but I looked at my genetic insights reports and it said that my body is not very good at detoxifying mercury and lead. So because of that I actually, and because I was desperate, I paid for a blood test of each of those, which is really very expensive compared to the other options, and it came back a super, super high levels of lead. The reference range, meaning 97% of people, are zero to three. Mine was 27. And the level which you should be hospitalized is 45. So I don't know, I can only guess, but the level where I was extremely unhealthy and going to the emergency room frequently and then not being able to find anything wrong with me. I might well have been at that level, but anyway, that's speculation. I knew that a year later, when I started to feel a bit better, it was 27, which is still ridiculously high.

Elwin Robinson:

I go to the medical doctor and I say could this be the cause of all my symptoms? Because, as well as everything else, unexplained abdominal pain is a classic, you know, top five symptom of lead poisoning. And he said, yeah, could be. And I said, okay, well, what are we going to do about this? And he said, well, we will retest you in a year. That was all they could think of to do. So that's, you know, mainstream medicine. So, yeah, that's an environmental toxin.

Elwin Robinson:

We never got to the bottom of that. My wife, my wife, you know, at the time we've been together for over 10 years, you know, drunk roughly the same water. You know, eating the same food roughly. You even use the same herbs and supplements, eating off the same plates, breathed in the same paint fumes, what you know, all the common things for lead and hers was one. So, and you know, I looked into it and it. You know, your body stores lead in the bones, and the half-life of lead in the bones is 20 years. All I can suspect is that I had it in there actually a very long time, probably my whole adult life at least, which you know would explain why I always had some of those symptoms like digestive issues, and that's something I never would have discovered without the genetics suggesting it. And so, yeah, that's an example of environmental poisons.

Michele Folan:

So I'm going to tell the listeners here. So the first time Elwin and I spoke, it was in July and I went ahead and signed up for genetic testing because I was having a lot of gastrointestinal issues. I still kind of am, so I don't want to share too much information but anyway, and so I thought it would be really helpful and kind of a cool way for Elwin to be able to highlight the science and kind of what he found in my genetic test, and not just for GI but anything else that kind of popped up that I should be aware of. So you have access to my test now and I'm kind of curious what you found.

Elwin Robinson:

Okay. So bear in mind, you know, it's usually a minimum of 60 minutes going through there. We won't, you know, do all of that time, so we'll just be scratching the surface, right, giving people a little taste, right.

Michele Folan:

He's scrolling.

Elwin Robinson:

Yeah, just trying to share my screen so I have a third screen now. So, yeah, so this is what it looks like in a nutshell. What we're looking at right now is the allergies and intolerances section, as you asked about that. I just pulled that up and so, yeah, if someone has gastrointestinal issues, that would be one of the things that I would check. I would see if there could be a uh, you know, immune system reactivity component to it, and so, as I said, there always be some reds like higher risk things up here, and so you don't have a huge amount, like we can see. I don't see a tendency for gluten intolerance or any of those kinds of things, but there are a few things here. The things that really jumps out at me is the high level of eosinophils. Is that something you ever had tested, like in a white blood cell count blood test, and had confirmed?

Michele Folan:

Is that connected to eczema?

Elwin Robinson:

Yeah, well, yes, yes, okay well. So normally if you do a full blood count so red blood cell count and white blood cell count it will be one of the standard markers that's on there. So if you ask your doctor, you probably had it before. So, yeah, raised eosinophils are correlated with allergies. The other reason why they're raised is in response to parasites. So quite commonly when I see people with this, they have had a history of allergies in their life and often in their family. And just to kind of back that up, there's also a higher risk for allergies in general, a higher risk for food intolerances in general. And so, yeah, I would expect that, and so I would encourage that person to do further testing.

Elwin Robinson:

I'm a big fan of further testing. Sometimes I encourage people to make changes based on what's in here, but most of the time, just like I said with that example I just gave of the lead, I would want to actually confirm the testing before acting upon it. Okay, so I would do a test for eosinophils and I would do a test for IgE and see if this is actually something that's going on. And then, of course, the second question what do you actually do about it? You'll have some recommendations in there. Whatever practitioners you work with will, you know, have their own recommendations, but that it gives you, like I said earlier, a clue right, something to focus on that may well be a significant factor in whatever it is you're experiencing.

Michele Folan:

What is IgE?

Elwin Robinson:

Immunoglobulin E. So there's IgG. Immunoglobulin G is the type that generally causes intolerances, which is where people have a reaction to things, but often it's kind of delayed and it's hard to work it out. Ige is the more immediate reaction, so that's where, within a few minutes of breathing something in or eating something or whatever, at the most you'll kind of feel it and it tends to be a much stronger response. So what you have here is a tendency for allergies, not intolerances. According to this, there's a sensitivity to milk protein. Casein is the only other thing, but there's not a huge amount of them. Part of the thing you know. One of the things I look at is just to see how many you have as well. Like you have about eight high risk factors here.

Elwin Robinson:

When I see people who are just riddled with allergic issues, then usually they're more. Like you know 10 or 20. So I wouldn't, all things being equal, I wouldn't expect you to have a super strong issue, but it would be worth investigating and seeing if it's related to your digestive issues. Okay, um, the other thing is you, you seem to be familiar with oxalates, so you you know.

Elwin Robinson:

The only other thing that I would pick up on is that you do have a high tendency for oxalate sensitivity and so in a case like that you can test for it. But it's not like super easy to get or helpful. The easiest thing to me usually is just to try two to three weeks with zero oxalates, see how you feel. Then reintroduce a really high oxalate meal, see how you feel, just the classic kind of um, stop and then reintroduce to see if you actually have an issue of oxalate, because of course this is only a genetic tendency, it's not a certainty right, okay I wanted to just focus on some of the positive stuff as well, actually before we go into the next like high risk thing.

Elwin Robinson:

So I'm surprised I shouldn't be surprised how often I see this in people who interview me for podcasts, like yeah, so he's pointing to verbal ability yeah, higher, higher.

Elwin Robinson:

You can see here where, um, there's like a small section that's green and a much larger section that's gray. That means it's not 50-50. That doesn't mean you're either higher or normal, or higher or lower. That means most people are just normal and then a few people are higher and you know you're in that category of a few people who are higher. So that's not a surprise and that's great. I'm just kind of skimming through. You talked about longevity. So I don't know if you've ever done a telomere length test, but if you have, it says you have a genetic tendency to have higher telomere length. So that's interesting. That's one of the markers that is often assessed to gauge someone's longevity.

Elwin Robinson:

Whenever I see this one, I mean not just this factor. There's a few factors, but if I hadn't have met you yet I would have. I just had one of these the other day as well. Some people have genetic factors where I do think to myself. I'd be very surprised if they're overweight and you're one of those people who have those genetics, or at least you know, let's say, significantly overweight. I guess most people are not perfectly happy with their body shape, but you know the person. You have a genetics where I'd say I'd be surprised if you're obese. And so again, I see that's very accurate from my anecdotal experience. And so again, I do think there is a genetic part of it and so one of the factors obviously that causes people to and I'm not saying it's the only one I absolutely believe that thyroid and insulin, all these things are relevant, but one of them is some people have a genetic tendency to overeat and then it's harder to obviously not be overweight and you don't have that.

Elwin Robinson:

I don't know if you'd say that's accurate. And then, speaking of longevity, I don't usually focus on one gene at a time because there are so many and I prefer, like the other reports that are, more overviews. But you know, I would just highlight this one. Cert1 is one that you often hear about in the longevity anti-aging community, and so you've actually got higher activity of that. So that's another indication of longevity. It says oh yeah, that was another one. You have a tendency to enjoy being more physically active. Is that accurate?

Michele Folan:

Yeah, that would be very accurate. Okay, I think my husband would call me a fart in a frying pan.

Elwin Robinson:

I'm not sure, what that means, but busy right, active.

Michele Folan:

Oh, it's just, that's one of those American things that we say Okay.

Elwin Robinson:

So again, yeah, I'll be surprised if you're obese, right Like. You have those genetics of someone who you know would be fit.

Michele Folan:

I did see in there too, that I'm less likely to have a shrimp allergy, which I'm glad to see too.

Elwin Robinson:

Excellent. Yeah, a lot of these are really obscure, like things you might not even heard of, so I kind of skipped through a lot of them. You know, sign of high muscle mass. So again, that doesn't mean you're necessarily going to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but it just means that you know a greater ratio of muscle to fat, which again would indicate, you know, a slimmer person in the case of a woman and this one's a really nice one, michelle. And again, I don't see this actually that often with podcast hosts, but I can see it's a very good quality and just in general.

Elwin Robinson:

So high levels of oxytocin. So oxytocin is called the love hormone, but I would say it's really like the connection hormone and it also allows the person to feel fulfilled. So a lot of people, especially people in the public world, they kind of have like a strong addictive tendency and it's kind of comes from a feeling of emptiness inside themselves and that correlates to low oxytocin and it's saying you don't have that. In fact you're the opposite. So, rather than you being a black hole of need, even if it's subtly unconsciously, you are the opposite. You are actually a giver. You make other people around you feel loved and appreciated and stuff like that.

Michele Folan:

Well, that's nice. I like that, Elwin.

Elwin Robinson:

You probably. I would guess you're not a loner. You have a strong community around you of people.

Michele Folan:

I do yes.

Elwin Robinson:

And that's quite unusual. I think I saw a statistic the average amount of friends a person has is 0.8 or something, which means more than 50% of the or close friends, rather more than 50% of the population, has no close friends. So again, there's all kinds of reasons for that, but oxytocin is one of them.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, and there's so much data out there. You look at the blue zones and the importance of community and having good people around you. It's one of those things that I think we need to be more aware of.

Elwin Robinson:

A hundred percent, and you're a perfect person to teach that, because you'll be able to embody it very well.

Michele Folan:

I talk about it all the time.

Elwin Robinson:

Okay, there you go, even the podcast, right, yeah, the name of the podcast. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So you can see there's a genetic basis for that, which is nice, obviously, on one hand. So there's always a double-edged sword. If there's a genetic basis for something, on one hand it means it's something that is definitely there, you can take for granted. The other hand, it does mean you kind of don't deserve credit for it.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, I know right, Just the way I'm made.

Elwin Robinson:

And it goes both ways. It's the same with problems, right? If you have a problem like, say, an allergy, and there is an energetic basis for it, the bad news you could say is oh you know, maybe it's not accurate, I don't know. But the good news is well, it's curable. Because, honestly, if you have an allergy and there is a genetic basis for it, it means that you can get the symptoms significantly better. But you're probably never going to be 100% allergy free because it's just built into you, Whereas if you don't have an energetic basis for it, it is possible to have a full recovery. So there's kind of a double-edged sword in both cases.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, okay, I see that.

Elwin Robinson:

So you said GI health. So I guess the natural next thing we can look at would be digestive health. And so, for anyone who does sign up, I strongly recommend for you to do the way I'm doing it here most of the time, which is basically just to look at one category at a time as opposed to try and look at the whole thing, because otherwise you're scrolling through hundreds of reports all in like a random order. So, yeah, I'd strongly recommend, uh, looking at category of time. So, first of all, even before I look at anything you know specific, I just kind of take it all in and just see how many high risk things there are here, and you know you have a fair few.

Elwin Robinson:

So there is definitely a possibility that, um, any of your gi issues could just be simply GI issues. What I mean by that is, for instance, some people come to me with gastrointestinal issues. They don't really have a genetic basis to have it, but then I look at their emotional well-being and I see that they have a tendency for extremely high stress and nervous system dysregulation and stuff like that. I'm like, okay, yes, you have a digestive issue, but what you really have is a nervous system issue and it's just showing up in your digestive system, if that makes sense.

Elwin Robinson:

Oh, yeah, totally makes sense, but in your case I can see that there are some basis for it. So we already talked about the food allergies and so, yeah, I would do a basic food allergy test, like we talked about, and a complete blood panel, something that a normal doctor would do anyway just to see if you have those higher eosinophils which could be like the root cause. If I look at you do also and I skipped over this because this was also in allergies and intolerances you do also have a high risk for gut inflammation and you have a high risk for gastrointestinal infection, a higher risk for peptic ulcers, higher risk for C diff infection, specifically more likely to have flatulence. I won't ask you about that, but something to consider. Oh, great that there could be a genetic basis More likely to have acid reflux. So I'm noticing a bit of a pattern.

Michele Folan:

Okay, he skipped over hemorrhoids, but I saw that too.

Elwin Robinson:

Yeah, that's okay.

Michele Folan:

My listeners know I share a lot anyway, so it's okay.

Elwin Robinson:

Okay, I'm more likely to have low stomach acid. So now I'm thinking huh, so I see a few different things which are intestine-related and I see a few different things that are stomach related specifically, and so those would be the two areas that I would be checking first, as opposed to gallbladder, pancreas I guess, which would be other areas, and liver. So I'm not seeing those. I'm seeing more, okay, stomach, and I'm seeing intestines, and so you know, I'd be guessing symptoms might be more like burping and acid reflux and stuff like that. Is there any?

Michele Folan:

validity to that? No, okay, no, that hasn't really been an issue, but that's interesting.

Elwin Robinson:

Or the other end.

Michele Folan:

So I did kind of my own stomach acid test by taking hydrochloric acid when I ate to see if it would produce heartburn. And it did almost immediately, even at very low dose. So I think I've pretty much ruled out the low stomach acid.

Elwin Robinson:

Okay, well, that's good and, of course, just because you have a risk for something doesn't mean you'll necessarily have it. But you've already done the test for it, which is excellent, because that would be the next thing I'd recommend. No guarantee that you have it, but just to test for it. And you know, if you want to double check, you could also do the sodium bicarb version right, where you have half a teaspoon of sodium bicarb.

Michele Folan:

So baking soda, basically Okay.

Elwin Robinson:

Yes, yeah, first thing in the morning and see how long it takes you to burp, and then it you know, if you don't burp at all, it shows really low stomach acid. If you do, but it's later, it shows medium low stomach acid. So basically you you want to. Optimal stomach acid means you burp about three minutes. So that's the test in a nutshell.

Elwin Robinson:

This is a very common people can look that up low stomach acid, baking soda test and that will give you the instructions for that. So again, that's almost free and very easy to do and you could just try that to confirm, because the btn hcl test is not 100 percent um reliable, because it is neither the test 100 percent reliable. But uh, the problem with the btn hcl one is if sometimes, if you have low stomach acid, the uh, the valve, the sphincter that um should stop acid coming back up, doesn't work very well, and so then when you add in something acidic like B10 and HCL or even acidic foods, it gives a reflux symptom which then makes you think that, oh, it's because I already have plenty of acid or I have too much acid, but actually it's the opposite. So the actual issue is you don't have enough stomach acid to close that sphincter to stop the acid reflux happening in the first place. So I'm not saying that's the case with you, I'm saying it's possible. So doing like another test, like the sodium bicarbonate, would be worth considering.

Michele Folan:

Oh, thank you for that. What else are you seeing on this test Now? You got me really intrigued.

Elwin Robinson:

And of course that can be, you know. So, if you have a tendency for gastrointestinal infection and gastrointestinal inflammation, uh, and you have digestive issues and you haven't told me what they are, but you know another thing to consider would be to actually do a like a gut microbiome test, which is usually based on a stool sample. It doesn't have to be super expensive, um, if you go to you know you can get top of the line test, that's I don't know 400, but you can also get like a simpler one, that's maybe 100 ish dollars and that will tell you if you have dysbiosis, if you have high levels of uh, some particular not desirable bacteria in your, in your stool, and then you know the other gastrointestinal infection. This is more I had is um sebo, which is where it's in the small intestine, and that's a little bit more difficult to test. Usually there's like a gas test for that, where you blow air into tubes and send it off to a lab, but there is like a device that you can buy these days and connect to your iPhone and kind of just do your own test at home, and that's again about $150, I think something like that. So again, I'm not'm not saying solely for you, but if your symptoms got bad enough and nothing else seemed to be working, you know you do have a increased genetic risk for SIBO, uh, based on this, and so that would be something to perhaps consider to see if that's what's going on.

Elwin Robinson:

Okay, yeah, okay, and, of course, yeah, now it could also be with the high risk for gut inflammation that you had that at some point. Maybe you've already resolved it, but then your gut stayed inflamed, and so that's why I do strongly recommend to people that they test and not just guess, because everything that, even all the natural stuff that they recommend, like oregano oil and grapes seed extract, grapefruit seed extract and garlic and wormwood and all that stuff, it's all toxic to some degree and it kills the good stuff, the good bacteria in you as well, and so people take all these things like willy-nilly just because they have digestive issues, but maybe you don't have any dysbiosis or infection. You just have inflammation, residual inflammation, especially if you have a high genetic tendency for it, which you do, and so I think it's very important to actually test to see if you have these things, to know then which way to go with treatment, because if you just have the inflammation, then you would go in a different direction. Right, you might go with more prebiotic bacteria to feed the good guys, you might go with probiotics, you might go with things that soothe the digestive lining, like glutamine and dgl and slippery elm and and all of that kind of stuff and, uh, you know, maybe cbd, maybe bpc 157, I mean there's all kinds of things that you can do.

Elwin Robinson:

So, knowing which it is is it an infectious thing, or is it an immune system reaction thing, which is what inflammation is, or is it both, in which case you have to deal with the infection thing first is important. And, yeah, just based on your genetics, uh, and you probably already know everything I'm saying, but just based on genetics, I would investigate both okay, yeah, I did.

Michele Folan:

I did do a stool stool test back in the summertime to rule out c, diff and a couple things, but it it all came up negative.

Elwin Robinson:

Was that one you did yourself or one that a medical doctor did?

Michele Folan:

No, I went to a lab.

Elwin Robinson:

Well, yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to cheat.

Michele Folan:

I didn't do it myself.

Elwin Robinson:

Did you go to a normal mainstream doctor or did you go to a functional doctor or someone who?

Michele Folan:

It was a mainstream doctor.

Elwin Robinson:

Yeah. So the problem is they only checked for a handful of things. I would not consider that to be ruling it out. It was a mainstream doctor, yeah. So the problem is they only checked for a handful of things. I would not consider that to be ruling it out it was only three things.

Elwin Robinson:

Yeah, okay, even less than a handful then. So yeah, I would do your own test that actually tests a broad spectrum of different things, that it could be or ideally even go to maybe a functional medicine practitioner or something like that who can order a broad test. Maybe something in your case I would say actually probably like a gifx or a gi map, would be the names of the tests which do a really thorough kind of um, uh, checking every factor. Because you know you do have I'm just looking at this now you have a fairly high risk for uh, ish, for ibd, but it's pretty rare. So odds on, you probably don't have it. To be honest, I'd give it less than 5%. But just like getting like calprotectin done, which is the market they usually use to assess if you have it, just to rule it out, to make sure that you don't have it would be worth doing.

Elwin Robinson:

You know colonoscopies and stuff are highly invasive and potentially you know you don't want to do it unless you absolutely have to, but you can do like a good quality. You don't want to do it unless you absolutely have to, but you can do like a good quality comprehensive stool test like a GI effects or a GI map that will tell you. You know, do I have leaky gut, do I have inflammatory bowel disease? Do I have malabsorption, do I have this, do I have that? Like? It really helps to narrow it down.

Michele Folan:

Okay, let's do a couple more.

Elwin Robinson:

So yeah, absolutely so. What other categories? So do you want to look at nutrients maybe?

Michele Folan:

Yeah, let's look at nutrient needs. That's right up my alley awesome Okay.

Elwin Robinson:

So, first thing, you don't have a huge amount of them that you have a genetically higher need for, so that's good. It means you're less likely to develop those deficiencies over time. I often look at nutrient needs very early. It's right up my alley too, because I feel like you know some of these building blocks have. They're so important and when a person is low in them it can create so many problems. And you know, I wish it had been the case. In my case it wasn't. But I have seen again and again people where there's one vitamin, one mineral and even surprisingly commonly one amino acid. When they get it, their whole life transforms. It's just like because you're only as strong as your weakest link and every one of these nutrients is essential, and so if you're low in the central nutrient, uh, everything else suffers, and so I I do think this is one of my favorite places to look.

Elwin Robinson:

So christy, for chromium, I wouldn't. I wouldn't pay too much attention to that one personally, uh, but increasingly for coenzyme Q10, that's interesting. Probably not an issue with a generally healthy person. But of course, if you were to take statins or something on the advice of your doctor, then I would test for coenzyme Q10, because they're depleted by things like statins anyway, and if you have low energy in general, then I would test for coenzyme Q10. Otherwise, you could take a supplement if you want, but it's quite possibly not really needed. Iron I would pay attention to, especially as a woman my co-host on my podcast, chrissy. She has this tendency and she's one of those people where, no matter how much iron she takes or eats, her iron levels are always low. I do see that in people with this genetic pattern. So is iron something that you've tested?

Michele Folan:

Yeah, that is a general test that my doctor does, so we do a hematocrit and hemoglobin, and mine are always.

Elwin Robinson:

Okay, yeah, hemoglobin, I guess, is the main one, but maybe ferritin as well, just to see how your reserves are.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, ferritin, test yeah.

Elwin Robinson:

Yeah, that would be worth doing, just to make sure that you aren't getting low in your reserves. That's the possibility with this tendency. The other ones increasingly for copper, alanine, potassium Honestly, just based on my experience, none of these are super pressing for most people. The only other one I would personally focus on would be potassium, and so this is really only a problem in people either with very restrictive diets or with severe gastrointestinal issues like frequent diarrhea, or people who are very sympathetically dominated in their nervous system, so meaning people who are always stressed, because when you're always stressed, your body holds on to sodium and excretes potassium. People drink coffee all day. It's the same kind of thing. It really excretes the potassium.

Elwin Robinson:

I've seen some people estimate that 98% of people are deficient in potassium. Wow, so this is potentially an issue. People with tachycardia, arrhythmia, all kinds of heart issues I'm amazed at how often those get resolved. The person just starts having potassium. People who sweat a lot, people who exercise a lot it can actually be a causative factor in digestive issues because it can slow down peristalsis if there is a lack of potassium. So if your digestive issues go along with constipation as opposed to diarrhea, then I would look at potassium.

Elwin Robinson:

Potassium is not easy to test, unfortunately. A normal medical doctor test will just tell you your blood ranges and the blood always keeps it within a tight range unless there's a medical emergency. But you can get a red blood cell potassium test that actually tells you a cellular storage of potassium. I wouldn't, it's quite expensive. I wouldn't bother with that. I would just look at like the signs of deficiency of potassium and if you identify with at least 80 of them, then consider maybe either testing for them or just trying to add it.

Elwin Robinson:

So the other thing that I sometimes recommend people who have this is there's this product called low salt L-O-S-A-L-T, and so normal salt is just sodium chloride. And then there's this stuff called low salt that you just have on your dinner table, which is two thirds potassium chloride, one thirdthird sodium chloride. So I say when you salt your food or when you're cooking, as well as putting in sodium chloride, just put a bit of potassium chloride in as well, just to keep it balanced. And that's something that you can do. That's safe, cheap, doesn't really have any downside, so long as you have a moderate amount and just try it. And if after a bowl you don't feel any difference, then don't buy it again, but you know, it's something that may make you feel significantly better Okay, when someone has digestive issues.

Elwin Robinson:

The other thing I like to look at is detoxification, and yeah, I did see okay. So there's a few relevant things here, a couple of relevant things at least. So the first is your body's ability to generally detox is below average, which is obviously not great news. Let me just have a look at what degree we're talking about on Cirque.

Michele Folan:

Okay.

Elwin Robinson:

So this just means that if you had a normal exposure to toxins by 21st century standards so if you ate fast you know fast food and toxic foods and you smoked and you drank maybe most people don't smoke these days, but you know you regularly drank alcohol and you regularly took drugs and all that stuff that a lot of people do your body would be able to handle it less well. So probably the fact you're in this sphere means you aren't doing that kind of stuff, and so I'm sure you're fine basically. But it might be an expansive effect as to why you're not doing that kind of stuff. Right, because your body just can't handle it as well as some people. And that's a good thing in many ways because it means that you don't do that kind of thing. It's a good thing as long as you don't do that stuff.

Michele Folan:

Alcohol for sure. That's something that I've had to come to terms with is because I can have two drinks and be hung over for two days. It's like the worst thing ever. So I just I really manage that very closely.

Elwin Robinson:

Okay, that's good. Yeah, that's, you know, related to some of this stuff like the aldehyde and glutathione and stuff like that. So, yeah, if that stuff doesn't work as well, then your body just doesn't handle poisons as well. And now, if you're healthy in your lifestyle and the rest of it, your body could still handle poisons better than the average person, potentially. But if you have this genetic and someone else has a higher ability to detox and you both live healthily, they're always going to be better at handling poisons than you are.

Michele Folan:

unfortunately, this has been so interesting.

Elwin Robinson:

Let me just give you one more, because this can be a root cause under active thyroid, this can absolutely be a root cause of digestive issues and, in fact, commonly is. You may not think of it because you're not obese, you're not overweight, but this is one of the root cause issues that I discovered for myself and my business partner that we had this genetic tendency for an underactive thyroid, and for both of us it made a huge difference to identify that. Now, the correct person to assess that for you, in my opinion, is not a normal standard medical doctor. It's a medical doctor who specializes in hormone optimization. So a medical doctor will often only evaluate TSH, which is thyroid stimulating hormone, and if it's not severely significantly elevated, they're going to say that your thyroid is hormone, and if it's not severely significantly elevated, they're going to say that your thyroid is fine. When they say fine, it means that it's not life threatening and you could carry on for 30 years and then it wouldn't kill you, but it can still create a lot of problems potentially, and so for about 75, 80% of people with underactive thyroid, they become overweight, but it's not necessarily going to be the case.

Elwin Robinson:

For some people like myself and my friend, it was actually the other way around, and so common symptoms are digestive issues, allergies, frequent respiratory infections, constipation, low energy, hormonal dysregulation, low sex drive, depression this is off the top of my head so just basically a lack of energy for all of what I call the luxury functions of the body. So you know, things like the heart, the lungs, the muscles, the survival parts of the brain still work well, but often detoxification, immune system, digestive system, memory, you know, in terms of brain memory, mood, stuff, like that sex drive, doesn't work as well, and so I would test it, and I would test 3T3, 3t4, as well as TSH, and then you want those things to be like optimal, not just like okay yeah, and I I will say this I did based on another podcast guest suggestion.

Michele Folan:

I did have them test, the other, the t3 and the t4. I know I'm not saying that right, but and I get what you're saying, because there are the lab values of what is normal range and then there's like optimal, yes, and so I was in the normal range, but I again I can't speak to if I was at optimal range. So I will check, I will do a double check on that.

Elwin Robinson:

Awesome, well, I can tell you, optimal for T3, you want it right at the top of the reference range. So I will check, I will do a double check on that. Awesome, well, I can tell you. Optimal for T3, you want it right at the top of the reference range For free T3, you want it right at the top of the reference range For TSH. You want it close to the bottom of the reference range. That's where you're going to be more like optimal.

Elwin Robinson:

But yeah, there's loads of them in the US, people who specialize in hormone optimization as opposed to just, you know, fixing you if you're severely broken. And you know generally they also do like progesterone and testosterone for men and all that kind of stuff. So those kind of doctors, they get it and they'll support you either with you know healthy lifestyle things or, if necessary, bioidentical. You know hormones and that can have a huge difference on everything. But it can solve digestive issues, because a lot of digestive issues are just because the motility is too slow, because there is a lack of metabolic energy to keep it moving and because the immune system is dysregulated, because there is a lack of energy for the immune system to properly regulate itself, and so for a lot of people digestive issues and any kind of allergy issues, skin issues, all that kind of stuff just goes away when they have the appropriate amount of thyroid.

Michele Folan:

All right. Well, I'll do some double checking on that. I do want to jump back into your business and make sure that we cover off on a few things. Elwin Right, so I know that there's been a little bit of buzz out there in the industry about privacy and, with Blackstone having bought Ancestry, can you talk to the listeners a little bit about how you ensure clients' data is being protected?

Elwin Robinson:

Yeah, absolutely. We do all the standard stuff, which is your data is anonymized everywhere other than within our own system. So, for instance, if you need to send Sliver off to a lab, then they don't know it's you. It's just based on the barcode that you registered with our system. We do all the standard stuff that, honestly, probably everyone else does, as far as I'm aware, for security, but what I will say that we do that's unusual is so.

Elwin Robinson:

We have a lot of issues like. I won't name them, but there was a hack a couple of years ago which I think freaked a lot of people out, justifiably. It basically comes down to the big companies with large teams of people, a lot of whom they're paying minimum wage or close to it, who really don't care very much, and so with our company, we specifically make it so only myself and Jessica, who is the head of operations and also an owner of the company, have access to the back end. It's kind of a bit annoying because it means we can't hire a customer service person to answer any questions. We have to do it all ourselves. But we do it on purpose, because we do not want any risk of any kind of data breach. Unfortunately that's my understanding, including in the famous case where it happened. We guarantee we will never sell, you know of your data. That's another thing. Uh, and you know ancestrycom made that decision. We're not the kind of company who, honestly, probably blackstone would even look at. We're a small company and we're, you know, going to stay that way. Uh, we're not looking to do, you know, massive rapid growth or whatever. We're trying to reach a specific, I guess, niche of of people and, uh, so we will never grow to the point where that changes, where we will have people who are not stakeholders in the company, who genuinely care, who have access to the back end, even if you have access to the back end.

Elwin Robinson:

So, like only Jessica and I do, as you experience for yourself, there's only two ways for me to be able to see your data. The first is for me to ask you for your password, which is what I did with you, and the second is that I can go in and reset the password on the backend. So that's the only way. I can't just look at your results. That's the only way I could is if I reset your password and then I logged in with that reset password. But if I do that you'll be notified that someone has reset your password. So there is no way for me or Jessica or anyone else to see your results without you knowing about it and, as far as I know, we're the only company who have that system. It's a bit annoying because it means there's like those issues, but you know we do it that way because we consider privacy to be you, to be the top priority.

Michele Folan:

Right, and then if you can also share how the process works, so how they order a DNA kit, can you go through that real quick?

Elwin Robinson:

Yeah. So if they go to geneticinsightsco, you see there's two options. It says do you need a DNA kit? That's the crucial distinction. And so if you've ever done an Ancestry service before like we just said Ancestrycom or 23andMe or whatever you probably don't you can just contact those companies and say please send me my raw DNA and they will send it to you. Sometimes you can just log in and get it. Sometimes you get to ask and then, if you have that, all you got to do is you sign up with our system, you tell it a couple of basic information, like your gender and your year of birth, and you upload your data and you have access to all of that information. Like we just went through, and we only got to the tip of the iceberg. If you don't have that, if you've never done that before, the process is a little bit more complex. But the main thing is just a longer wait. So if you have your own DNA data, you can literally get your results within a few hours, which is what was so compelling to me. I told my story about when I first did it. If you don't, you need to also choose the option where you add the DNA kit.

Elwin Robinson:

So what will happen then is it will get shipped to your door. You take a. Depending on what country you're in, it's a cheap cheek swab or a saliva in a tube. You send it back. You register it with us before you send it back. So, again, it's sent off just with a barcode. There's not your name or anything like that on there, so the lab never sees anything about you. And then when your results are ready, which can take four to eight weeks I've actually seen it be quicker these days, but I can't guarantee. Can't guarantee it, so it's a bit of a wait you get notified via email. Your results are ready. Then you can log in and see all the same stuff as we just showed you.

Michele Folan:

Okay, yeah, actually, once I got the DNA results, it was really quick. So, you guys, that was amazing. I was really impressed with that. You had a coupon code for the listeners for the service.

Elwin Robinson:

Yes, yeah, absolutely so. It's Friend25. Yeah, for everyone who listens to the podcast, 25% off.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, so if anybody is interested, elwynn has graciously offered a coupon code. Offered a coupon code. Use friend25 at checkout at the website geneticsinsightsco, not com, and you can get your genetic report, which to me is really fascinating. And this is kind of stuff that I really want to know because I want to be able to start honing in on some of the things that have kind of been bothering me. I do have kind of a personal question for you what is one of your pillars of self-care? What do you do for yourself every day?

Elwin Robinson:

Oh, there's so many. At the moment. I do a guided hypnotherapy session every day. Oh, I do a lymphatic drainage. That's the first thing I do in the morning. I'll talk about that one. So I get up and for three minutes I massage each of my lymph glands and I do like another three minutes of shaking and I get my lymph going and I'm really enjoying that at the moment.

Michele Folan:

Okay, we've not had that one. After how many shows I've done, we've not had anyone talk about lymphatic drainage. That's a good one. Okay, thank you for that. And then you also have a podcast.

Elwin Robinson:

Yes, yes, it's called the Rejuvenate Podcast. It's less of a guest we occasionally have guests but it's more of a topic-based podcast. So, if you're interested in my take on weight loss, if you're interested in my take on allergies, or you know all these things, digestion, all these things we discussed today, there's almost certainly an episode where I do like a deep dive on it. And the whole podcast is based on that seven pillar system that I said earlier, identifying the seven root causes. So for each issue, we'll look at. You know, if you have allergies, we'll look at, okay, what nutritional deficiencies might be causing it, what genetic issues might be causing it, what hormonal imbalances might be causing it. We go through all seven and we look at identifying and resolving the root causes of, you know, whatever topic you're interested in.

Michele Folan:

Perfect.

Elwin Robinson:

And it's called the Rejuvenate Podcast. And yeah, if you look up my name, youtubecom slash Elwyn Robinson, I think rumblecom slash Elwyn Robinson probably. And then we're on Apple and Spotify and all that stuff as well.

Michele Folan:

All right, I'll put all that in the show notes and then they can find you at geneticinsightsco and Elwyn Robinson. This was it was the longest podcast I've ever done, but it was so worth it and I hope everybody got something out of this. And if you are having some issues or you just want to try to get some answers for some things that traditional medicine hasn't quite been able to pinpoint yet, this is a great place to start and you can use the coupon code and give Genetic Insights a try. Thank you for being here, elwin.

Elwin Robinson:

Thank you so much.

Michele Folan:

Hey, thanks for tuning in. Please rate and review the show where you listen to the podcast. And did you know that Asking for a Friend is available now to listen on YouTube? You can subscribe to the podcast there as well. Your support is appreciated and it helps others find the show. Thank you.