Secrets of Genetics to Empower Your Health

Yael Joffe Interview

[00:00:00] Brandon Stover: Hey, you welcome to evolve a show to help you become a hero and solve the world's greatest challenges. I'm your host brain and Stover founder of Play-Doh university. And I interview social innovators, entrepreneurs, and thinkers about the global problems we face and the solutions that they have created to solve.

Today's challenge health and wellbeing.

Our guest is Dr. Yale, Joffey

founder and chief science, officer of three X four, genetics, which is bringing the future of personalized healthcare by making use of the power of your unique genetic. This digital health company is pioneering the application of genomics to improve human health and sports performance. By giving people access to more personalized DNA, data driven recommendations for fitness, food, supplements, and lifestyle

pioneering in the field, and even cobbling together, her own PhD. Yo became a world renowned scientist in the rapidly evolving discipline of Nutrogenomix. She has over 20 years of experience in nutrition, genetics, sound, research, clinical practice, and scientific integrity. She's a highly sought after speaker has coauthored two books, including it's not just your jeans and jeans to plate, and has been published in multiple peer reviewed scientific journal.

She has also trained hundreds of healthcare practitioners globally in Nutrogenomix as a course creator and an adjunct professor.

And today yo is going to share how we can use genetics to help everyone everywhere. Personalize every health decision they have addressing root causes, not just patching symptoms.

So I know that your really passionate about cold water swimming. And so I'd like to start there and learn how you got into it and why you keep going back to it.

[00:01:46] Yael Joffe: And if we, if we talk about cold water, we might never ever talk about genetics. So thanks for asking you that question because I love talking about cohorts. So I, the reason I got into to swimming in the first place is because I used to be a runner and like most running B hotels and I hit my back and they say, you'll never run again.

That turned to some inquiry. As most of us do and really loved it. I always loved terrain. And then did my first kind of ocean event, very small. It was like a mile, well, in those days, like a mile felt like the world to me

almost felt like our jobs, but, but something, Yeah.

just something connected with me.

And I just loved being in the ocean for like a long time. And I loved kind of going back into this all the time. And, and then I moved to Cape town, I'm south African. And for those that don't know, and the ocean is extremely cold in Cape town. We have two oceans, Atlantic and Indian, but I lived on the Atlantic side, which is really cold, but it's really good.

Cause the sharks prefer the warm water because it's on the other side of the, of the country. And so I had been swimming in the pool for quite some time with a kind of into the ocean. And I re I moved back to Cape town and there's a huge open water swimming community and particularly a cold water swimming community.

And I just, I got myself a week we've made as we all do and we're into join them. And even with the wetsuit, I thought the water was extremely cold. And for the first couple of months, I used to rock up in my width and the thrill of the ocean and the waves and the tides and the camaraderie of the other thermal in itself was just completely addictive.

But one day someone said to me, you know, why don't you talk, take a few weeks and after quite horrified, but eventually I was surrounded by all these people coming with athletes and been thinking like, well, if they can do it. I'm missing something. So that's how I got it. And I took a forward with, for like 10 minutes and then, and then something happened and it's been, gosh, now 7, 8, 7 years or something that I've been coming cold water.

And it becomes more and more addictive. So what happens is you, your body adapts to the degree that you can stay in longer to call the water, but the addiction grows and, and it is pure addiction. There's no doubt about it. And I think after a couple of years of swimming in the ocean in the cold, you start appreciating what it's doing for you.

And you start realizing that you're surrounded by individuals who are seeking out and there's some people and cold water immersion is amazing. Whether it's a cold shower or a cold. But cold water in, in the ocean takes it to a whole nother level, right. Because you're very humbled by nature and you're very humbled by the ocean.

So every time I step into the ocean, I'm no longer like this Trepanier hardworking or even the mom, like all of that falls away. And there's, there's like this deep humility and survival element of being in a cold ocean. And though I think, you know, we, we know now there's lots of asserts that cold water switches on your Vegas nerve.

So interesting. I have never been able to meditate. And even though I work in the face of. Meditation has been something that I've tried on an offer for like 20 years. And it's just been abusive to me. Just throw me in no matter how, which way I try it. And I discovered that the ocean was giving me what meditation would have given me, and that this was my vision, you know, and we know now from the clients that that's exactly what happens.

It actually, that's what cold water immersion does for your body is exactly what meditation does, which is kind of get you away from the fight of flight. You know, it triggers your parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system and that plus that, that being so immersed in nature, that you also humbled and frightened and excited is what got me started.

[00:05:58] Brandon Stover: well I would like to use that as a little bit of a segue. And if you could explain to our listeners who are unfamiliar with genetics and epigenetics, how an external stimuli, like cold water swimming turns on and off genes in our body, which ultimately affects our.

[00:06:14] Yael Joffe: Okay, great. That is a perfect segue. Before I talk about epigenetics, I'm going to talk about genetics because epigenetics is above genetics. So genetics is the bar code. So we're where We have the DNA code was essentially a full little AGCP.

Exactly. Like we have language of English, which are 26 letters and these letters really make words. And these words are called current, which makes me an asset to make proteins. And they really drive our body. They like the engine of our body, the blueprints making proteins. But at 0.1% of this code, we different from each other.

So if 99.9% of the thing, but a 0.1%, our code is different. I call them, I call them spelling changes. You can call them gene variants. You can call them polymorphism, but I just don't call them mutations because they're not a negative thing. They're evolution, right. They, where we come from. So, but what these spelling changes do is determine why are we different from each other and how we respond to the world around.

So because the spelling changes, these changes in our code or coding for different changing. The way our proteins are made. It changes the way we interact with nutrition, the food we eat, the supplements we take, the exercise we do. But even more than that, it changes the way we experience stress or trauma or the weather.

And even change the way we experience relationships. So when we talk about things like anxiety, depression, ADHD, or it's all about spelling change, right? So if we can understand these gene variants, these spelling changes in our body and what we inherited, it gives us a deep insight into who we are in the world and how we respond to the world around us.

So for me, that's always the first layer. That's super important, which is no, no, that self right self knowledge. The women, in fact, I know they felt why, why you respond to the world around you, and then you could start to rating your world to really match your genetic profile. And so that in the first half of the equation, and for the first 15 years of my career, I only dealt in that half of the equation, which was really hot.

And then undiscovered, epigenome. So epigenetics is IPI meaning about genetics. That means everything around genetics that does not have to do with code. So in, in epigenetics, it doesn't change the sequence. It doesn't change your blueprint. It doesn't change the T for G. That is not what you're talking about, but what it does do exactly what you said, which has changed the way our genes switch on and switch off now to make the proteins that I spoke about in the first part.

And gene needs to switch on it kind of unravels from the chromosome. It's really beautiful. It, it opens itself up. Kind of laid itself out. And when when a gene opens, it makes the protein and the protein goes on to be an enzyme or a hormone or a brain message. And when it's done making a protein, it wraps itself up again and toxic fats itself back into the chromosome.

So sometimes we want to switch on genes when we need these proteins. And sometimes when we don't eat the proteins, we want to switch off these genes. And the reason these genes is due to things that are happening in our environment. So, perfect example is when we N we, we drink dairy milk, lactose. Buddy recognizes that there's the sugar lactose that needs to be broken down. So this gene opens up the lactose D LCT gene. It produces an enzyme called lactase, which breaks down lactose and our body's able to process it. And everything goes great with our morning coffee, but in some of us, right, when we open up that lactose gene, we have a spelling change in that lactose G.

And when we make the enzyme, it isn't made very well. Okay. It's a suboptimal enzyme. So when we can't break down the lactose and our morning coffee, it doesn't work very well. So maybe diarrhea and bloating. So something in our environment caused in this case, the coffee that pull up dairy milk coats, that gene to turnover.

So now we starting to understand that if every single decision we make every minute of the day, every day of our lives is changing. Our gene expression is switching on gene and switching off genes. So when we put the two together, we now have the full picture, which is understand who you are, understand just that any changes, understand how you respond to the world around you and then make.

Decisions to which on is such a theme because it only to healing happens when your genes are producing proteins to heal itself. When we use pharmaceuticals and drugs, absolutely have a place where we think that I'm taking a vitamin C supplement is going to fix things. It's never going to fix them. But when we can use a supplement, lack of supplement or tumeric or berberine, the supplements that switch on and switch off genes are the most powerful supplements.

The foods that switch on being the most powerful. So, so we, we know broccoli is an amazing food, but part of the reason is it contains a compound that switches on genes that help us detox that help decrease inflammation. So the full circle of epigenetics is really the idea of food is medicine. So now we have what are called insights and action, where we understand that. And we make very self-aware decisions to be able to heal ourselves. So that kind of genetic one-on-one

[00:12:18] Brandon Stover: yeah. Perfect. Thank you. Well, this is quite a juxtaposition against what we have right now in our modern medicine, where most people are making health decisions based on generalized recommendations for everybody without ever truly understanding their own body know thyself. As you were saying, tell us how the one size fits all model to help has.

[00:12:39] Yael Joffe: well, I mean, I don't, I think everyone knows it's failed. You just have to look around you, you know, so we, it knows the amount of cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, but even worse than that, anxiety, depression kind of the mood disorders cognitive function, loss of memory. It's everywhere.

That's something about the choices we making in our lifestyle. If not fitting the kind of ancestral DNA that we have, this has majored that's connect between the choices we making and we know that's happening because we look it up. We told us, and we look at the food that's available for ourselves and our children.

And it's, you know, it has practice corn syrup and sugar and fond carbohydrate, and some scary fats that are frying off food. And so we know that all, all of these things are switching on and switching off genes that are not conducive that are not matching in harmony with our DNA and the way that the healthcare system both.

And it was both a to, to deal with acute episodes of care. So, you know, like I have a heart attack or I get hit by car healthcare, fantastic acute medicine. We also know that the pharmaceutical industry has been both on a similar concept of switching on in situ of gene, but with a sledge. That we've described the difference between taking a drug.

So these genes, I was talking about that broccoli activate we can have drugs that activate them hours and times from that, then broccoli, the problem is it's like taking a sledgehammer to your body. Then we talk about activation versus modulation. So a drug can switch on genes, but it switches on so hard and so much that it almost like knocks out the whole system, right?

It's like one of those really big colleges, whereas you attrition and meditation and cold water is, is it's gentle. So it modulates, it works in harmony with the genes. So what we're trying to get away from is this kind of sledgehammer approach, which the body cannot mind it because the body is actually brilliant.

And if we allow it to kind of run its own process of the disease really well, and we need to support it with great nutrition and decrease the toxins and environment, but the system of acute medicine and pharmaceuticals, and don't get me wrong. I've used drugs when I say they have to, but the author many times when nutrition is just going to be a smarter choice to be able to allow the body to heal itself.

[00:15:08] Brandon Stover: Yeah. Could you expand a little bit on how medicine currently focuses on symptoms and not the root causes of.

[00:15:15] Yael Joffe: Most of my career and all mines. So ma I started off as a dietician and it was just horrible because for a couple reasons. So one is my whole program's starting to your dietician wants to these babies. So the first thing I learned about was diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and the find by themselves.

So if you have diabetes or if you have Alzheimer's, these are the symptoms. And when we treat a patient, we treat those symptoms. And it was a very long time before I discovered the wonderful world of functional medicine, which made me understand that when you, when you go to sleep one night and you don't have cancer and you wake up the next morning and you have cancer, that is a lie.

So the chronic, what we call chronic diseases of lifestyle take in 20, 30, 40 years to grow in our bodies. Right.

So cancer doesn't just appear applications. All of these diseases I've mentioned happen over time and they happen because some way in our body at a cell level, something isn't functioning optimally.

So we talk about the function cells, attention systems to function. It could be your glucose and insulin isn't functioning, optimally. It could be your detox with occasionally inflammation. And the, what we talk about is root cause analysis, right? Or in my world, we talk about the little symptoms. What are the functions in your cell that are happening billions of times a day.

But if they're not happening, optimally will have an effect downstream that over time will cause more suspension meant manifest as symptoms. And ultimately those symptoms will be grouped together and call the disease. And we know whether it's a migraine or diabetes or Alzheimer's. The is no one mine grade.

The is no one diabetes that they manifest differently because of where the root quote came from. So the great world of integrative and functional medicine said, well, there's no point in treating the ends. That's just kind of managing the car crash. Let's go back and understand what was going wrong. 10, 20, 30 years ago, that was dysfunctional, optimal, fix that because if we can fix that, we can delay.

Or prevent or manage what is happening in downstream. So we keep very far away from this concept of disease management, which is very much a healthcare system and symptom management, which is very much a healthcare system and really do what we call like upstream medicine or root cause analysis, which is, and then we find, cause people have multiple problems.

They never have just diabetes. And so we started seeing that obesity, diabetes, they all had things in common like inflammation. So we thought, well, what happens if we target information? Then maybe we get a full week. Cause we know even that if you overweight and battling with weight and you have a switched on genes and the inflammation and those inflammatory genes are not switching off, you will never lose weight if you don't deal with the inflammation.

So we started realizing. If we just go back upstream and solve those real cool problems, we're going to solve a whole bunch of stuff going downstream. So that's, that is really where the most exciting places and we can do it in a personalized fashion. So the concept, I have a great slide, which I put up, which is really the doctor guidelines, the USA doctor guidelines, you know, and I, and this was my undergrad, right.

Being a dietician. I was like, how could we possibly imagine that the billions of people in this world all need the same died when we have three to 4 million places in our DNA that are different. And yet one that, and that that's the same, whether it's paleo or keto or any of those diets,

[00:19:18] Brandon Stover: I'd like to shift to the solution side of this. We've started to paint a picture about. We don't have a quite very good understanding of our own bodies and the different genes that we have in ways that we can turn them on and off. And we're also not understanding some of our lifestyle choices and how that's the root cause of many things.

Tell us about three by four genetics and the solution you guys are putting forward to enhance health, wellbeing, and performance.

[00:19:45] Yael Joffe: So after my horrible dietetics degree, I went kind of looking for answers of how we could understand health better. And I landed up. By chance, if there's such a thing as John wonderful world of genetics. And I started working genetics in the year 2000, which was 22 years ago, and very early, like three years before the human genome was even drafted.

And I thought I was very lucky to land up and, and courageous enough to start working in this area of genetics, where we could start looking at testing people's DNA and looking for the felon changes to start understanding how we can give them better. So the first genetic test that I was part of building wasn't 2000 then, and most of my career has been about how do we provide a way for individuals and practitioners, healthcare practitioners, to understand their patients, to make much better decisions right upfront.

Because the other thing about the healthcare system is it's a trial and error system. You know, we're going to try it on this drug. We're going to try it on this diet. And if you know how you do, and then come back to me and then we'll try something else. And there's a huge cost to that. There's a, there's a emotional cost.

There's a psychological cost and there's a physiological cost. But even every time you try something on the buddy that isn't what the body needs. There's a cost to that as well. So why we love genetics is we call about the gene approach, which is to reduce the child. To really get to the answer quicker because we know if I had to give the broadest broadest overview, I would say half of who we are and what determines our choice of genetic and the other half is going to be all the other things that are happening in our life.

So I got an entire degree without mentioning the word gene whites, once in the acting. So we were taught, how do you build diets without understanding 50% of the equation? So it can say now looking back in fact, Yeah.

and the reality is it's still happening. So we haven't done that well, but I wanted to call the company that little hole, but that really changed the industry.

I wanted to uplift the industry, April offering a genetic tests that really gave us, I mean, w we now can do a whole lot of stuff in 2022 that we couldn't do in 20, in 2000 gave us deep insight. Into why we different and how we respond to the world around us. And so but I also wanted to create an ecosystem for that pit that meant that you, as the consumer would have a really positive and valuable engagement with your genetics.

And also that healthcare practitioner would be uplifted and upskilled to be able to work with genetics and their practice and be able to extract the value because the genetic testing industry over the last 20 years, having things failed quite miserably, even though I've kind of been part of it in that we got really good at testing, but not translating.

You know, we could, we thought the biggest testing company got ancestry company testing, 20 million people. So you know who your cousin might be and where you come from, but you don't know what to eat for breakfast. So the value to your daily decision making was extremely low. The most people feeling very underwhelmed and disappointed by the experience of genetic.

So I really wanted to change that and I wanted to show how genetics really can change a lot. So three, four genetics, which is the company I founded about four or five years ago was ready to upscale practitioner to education, mentorship, nurturing handholding, to re really be able to dig deep and find the gems of genetics to working with their patients.

And their patients might be chronically ill in, in the diseases. Kind of we just ask them for, or there might be people who are just wanting to live the healthiest life. Have a great kind of health span prevents it could be a sports athlete and it could be weight, of course. So however it was, we wanted to give the tool of insight of genetics, to practitioners, to work with the patient.

So to do that, we had to build a really brilliant test that spoke to you the user and in my entire career building genetic tests, I had always built them. And then I had this epiphany four or five years ago that scientists shouldn't bulk product that and I, it made me, it took me so long, you know, that, that we're good at science, but we don't understand user experience.

We don't understand design thinking. We don't understand behavior modification using kind of elements of design. So I, when I thought of three, four, the first thing I did was I actually formed a partnership with a company called sea monster, which was a behavioral game-ification company. So they use gamification.

In kind of education to change behavior. And I realized that that was the piece of the puzzle that I had no sense of whatsoever. And so that was the beginning of G. Oh. And it changed pretty much everything that we did because we pulled the beautiful report where we use color as a language, we use storytelling.

And we used imagery. We call it the visual compensation to bring the individual into the story of their genetics, to understand why the decisions that we're making, we're impacting them. So, so kind of thing. Well, like this is your DNA. You can choose to make the decision or not, but it's not my DNA and it's yours, Right. The sequence doesn't change. So, so we both three, four based on the pillars of excellent time, beautiful engagement. Hi education for the practitioner up and handholding to give them the confidence and, and engaging that they needed. And then we built the community because when I brought it out in genetic that I was alone, I was like a leper in the industry.

You know, everyone told me it was a career limiting move. I was totally isolated from my peers and it was very, it was very hard. It took like my. Like personality to really stick it out. So I want him to build a community for practitioners, where they felt safe, where they could come and they could learn, they could ask questions of each other.

They could connect multitask completely. Multi-disciplinary no one owns the world of what I call lifestyle genetics, not just nutrition, the cold water, it's the meditation. It's the connection. It's the laughing, it's the hiking that they could come and they could join and they could learn together and kind of learn from each other and kind of all grow.

So that is the world of truth for genetic, which we've not been in the U S for two years. We launched it four years ago in Africa. And we, you know, have quite a few thousands of practitioners now living in community and all going from dipping a toe into this world of genetics and being quite overwhelmed and intimidating it to becoming.

That that then obviously gets popped on to, to the individual to empower them, to make these better decisions.

[00:26:53] Brandon Stover: Right. I'm a little curious about your choice in bringing a network of health professionals in to work with the consumer when they get these reports, rather than just going direct to consumer and having maybe a database of education that they can look up when they get this gene report and see, oh, I have these genes, how has, how I can switch them on and often, you know, giving full power to just the consumer.

[00:27:16] Yael Joffe: Very good question. And the way you phrase that is very good because you a hundred percent. Right. So when I, when I had a really hard look, when I was trying to kind of, I was going through my kind of crisis of failure of looking back at the industry and trying to figure out what it failed, what it succeeded.

My sense was that the direct to consumer engagement had failed completely.

[00:27:36] Brandon Stover: Mm.

[00:27:38] Yael Joffe: When I looked at the tests that were being offered to, to continue it. So you could do a training. There's many tests you could do. There are hundreds of them. Right? And I was looking at the engagement. What happens with direct continued genetics.

In fact, because I have no idea who you are. Brandon. I don't know your history. I don't know your goals and dreams. I don't know your medical history. I don't know what you, what your day looks like. I don't know whether you're a vegan, whether you care about the climate, whether you care about humans. And I don't know anything about you.

I don't know about your family history that I produced a genetic report that dumb down everything, because I don't know you. So the, the thing about genetics is that two things. One is it's not your destiny, right? as we spoke about, we Can change the way our genes have split themselves, I wear do behavior.

The other thing is, do you onset and onto by themselves, they re they will never be. So remember if they'd like jeans are maybe 50% of the equation for some people, maybe 30, 40%, 70, 80, but the only part of the answer to who you are. So if I only look at your jeans and only give you recommendations on your deans, missed the genetics and they gave the other half the patient.

So I'm giving you answers without the other part of the equation. So for me, genetics out of context of the, of the person is failing in the same way that that nutrition out of context of genetics are failing. But, so I started out by saying, if I want to really empower you to make the best decisions. And genetics is complicated.

So even meeting practitioners are realized the journey of education and learning in a practitioner. Who's got a science degree to understand switching on and switching off genes and being able to look up a gene and read about it was going to be extremely difficult. It doesn't mean that we're not trying to, I'm going to tell you how we're going to chop all the problem, but to start out, I needed to pick the, the bottom because you may get a text and go, you know what?

This is really interesting, but I want to dive deeper and to dive deeper, I'm going to go to a practitioner who's been trained in this, and we're going to go deeper. Especially if you have a complex chronic disease, you really needed someone to put the dots together and really deep feedback. So I wanted to make sure that every individual got the greater value from understanding the genetics and to do that.

I needed to work with practicing.

[00:30:12] Brandon Stover: Can you explain a little bit about your guys's genetic test compared to some of the other ones out there you mentioned like 23 and me. And cause I think you guys from my research go a little deeper than some of the things that they're testing.

[00:30:26] Yael Joffe: Yes, that's right. The issue with 23 and me and many companies like 23andme, ancestry.com is what they want, why they wanting to test you. So we need to understand their business model and we need to that. And then we'll talk about why they taste different in terms of what you actually get. The, all these, especially 20 came me because they thought transparent and commercialized is they want to test as many people as possible.

I have well over 10 million. I think they probably 12, 13 million from there on that at the cheapest possible price. Because they want as many people as possible. And then they going to give you some information, which is ancestry, which is great. Really. I mean, it is great. I love ancestry. And then they depersonalize the data.

So they take away your name and the details. And if you give them permission to keep not the name, but your health information, which is what they really want. And then they sell it to a pharmaceutical company in this case, black, because you had a million dollars, you have a partnership because they're trying to figure out how they can use genetics plus knowing who you are for new drug discovery.

And it's pretty smart because. discovery is a really archaic way of doing it the way it's currently done. So it takes tenure and it cost a billion dollars to try and discover a new drug. So what they thing is, if I understand your genetics and I understand whether you're sick or healthy or something about you, we can try and find new drugs, not so far that hadn't time to anything, but really it's a bad idea, but it's also the business model and there's nothing in their business model about how nothing at all.

Right? So when they do the genetic test, they use something called they use something called low posturing testing. Well, first of all, they're both a chip. So chip is something you build from the emoji, which has all the genes on you want to test. And the genes that they put on were very related to ancestry and to drugs.

The genes we built in touch are very related to health and all the upstream processes that we spoke about, that'd be really an offender. And the problem is that some of the genes that we want to know about that are really important for your health are quite tricky to test, which makes our testing process, what we call a clinical grade genetic test, which is more expensive, it's slower.

And we taped every gene variant three times to make sure that we get the same result all three times before you release it to you. That's part of working with a clinical grade product, whereas in 2020, they just completed one and results with the results. So the two issues, well, we wanted to make sure that we had all the genes we needed, which we couldn't get.

If we use 23 at me, because they miss out some really important ones. And also that the quality of the testing, we use a higher clinical grade testing. all come cases where you can use 23 minute, like fourth, fourth week when you're not giving clinical information, but in our space, we can't use that information.

And that is, and there were a lot of companies who will say upload your 23andme data and we'll give you a, a report for $20. And and they are horrible. Those reports, I mean, they're, they're horrible. They don't know you, they missing a whole lot of super important genes. You know, we can get them to the detail of that, but, but, but in essence, it's, I actually have a lot of respect for 20 to me for what they're doing in terms of drug discovery, but MIMA, to be very clear that they're not a health company.

[00:34:10] Brandon Stover: Yeah. And that's it sounds like not so much for the consumers, like knowledge about what they can do with their life. You know, they get this information as you mentioned with your company, the insights plus the action. So I'd like to talk a little bit about the action side. Like once we get this report maybe give us an example of something you guys call DNA dieting and how knowing your genetics will help.

[00:34:32] Yael Joffe: I love the world of genetics and weights because I thought that the dietician, I would battle with my weight my whole life, and I was always. Horrified that by the, by what I was told, you know, that you just lack self control, that you've got no willpower that you kind of greedy, especially when I was younger as a child and would love eating.

I mean, we've had a huge appetite and you know, my mother sent me the costume when I was like 12 and put me on this horrible, horrible low-calorie diet that I was kind of like, it was just horrible, horrible, right? I mean, everyone that listens to this has experienced part of this, or if they haven't experienced, then that knows someone who have that.

You go to a dietician and you get a diet sheet and you told, you know, if you just reduce your calories and increase your, your expenditure, that you'll lose weight, and then you come back them next week and you say, well, I did everything you told me, and I have an arthritis and the person turns around and says, you must have been cheating.

You didn't follow on. I did. And that is the world that doc takes with bolt-on and it's a lie. It's an absolute lie. And what it's done. It's created a sense of failure in millions and millions and millions of people around the world that they have failed, but actually they didn't fail the kind of science failed them.

And what we've come to understand through genetics is the complexity of what are consuming calories, storing calories, and burning up calories. And when we started breaking it down, we understood that the one area, which I really love is understanding even how and why we eat. So when we started looking at genetics, I discovered this amazing thing, believe it or not like plenty in industry.

And I didn't realize that we all experienced hunger differently. So if you're not Focht for 12 hours and don't eat anything at the 12 hour, mark, your hunger, my hunger are not the same. I might be so ravishingly hungry that I could literally eat 10 chickens and you might say, well, I'm great. A bowl of soup and you know, a nice salad, we'll go down downgrades and I'll feel fine.

So hunger is very determined by genetics and we can see it in Tilden who are extremely hungry for Banga. And the parents will be like you E you're just eating all the time or even the concept of eating. But actually we experienced hunger differently. We experience fullness differently. So you and I have our cheeseburger and chips after our thought and you got, that was great.

I feel full. That was fantastic. And I'm like kinda hungry, you know, and I need something more. So it was a huge awakening me for me to understand that I don't experience hunger the same way I should. Patronize my patients in that way to assume that I understand what they're going through and also that even my behavior on eating.

So it's going to fuck on driven to snack, to eat continuously. And and some of us will be driven to very comfortably atrial means a day. So you take someone who's genetically more inclined to snack and you put them on an intermittent fasting and you tell them they can only it's six hours a day. And, and then you kind of understand, and you're like, oh, it's so easy.

I do it all the time. So this is one of the areas that I find totally fascinating. The other thing is around even addiction behavior around. This concept of comfort, eating, like why do for some of us will consume food to make us feel better? And we have these main genes could be already to DRD 1, 2, 3, 4, which are related dopamine and dopamine is I feel good hormone and with a reward behavior hormone.

So we do things. Priests are dopamine to make us feel better. And it could be that we gamble. We take drugs or alcohol, or we eat carbohydrate, or we eat sugar. Some of us drive our dopamine levels high by doing a large amount of exercise. Even cold water can help dove mean. So understanding if an individual is driven to drive dopamine by these in carbohydrates and sugars is really important to understand, because then it's.

Superficial concepts of Europe, comfort eater. You should, you should go and stop listening to net net instead of kind of eat and then understanding how we like store calories and how we burn them up. And people you can train for marathons and don't shift their weight, like how's that possible. So it's been an amazing journey for me, understanding, and I give entire folks a nexus about genetic for weight, because when I started having conversations with patients around an outfit in them, I'm looking at your genetics and I can see it's been really hard.

Do you know that you gain weight easily and it's been hard for you to lose weight? They would like start crying because no one in their life had heard.

[00:39:32] Brandon Stover: Yeah.

[00:39:33] Yael Joffe: They had just been told calories in and calories out and you cheating. So it's, it's a, it's a, it's an amazing world that is opened up in with a lot of compassion and empathy and understanding why for some of us it's hard and then trying to figure out a plan to navigate that.

And with it's building in a lot of, kind of CBT behavior the behavioral therapy also a lot of expectation and management around goals, like what is a realistic weight? What is the healthy way to, I'm never going to be slammed? How can I feel? It's just, it doesn't mean we all have to walk around a beast.

It's about understanding who we are, self nodded and how we respond to the world around us, which is kind of where we started.

[00:40:15] Brandon Stover: Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you. Well, I wanted to bring up a one concern about genetics and with the availability of people's genetics, are you concerned at all about maybe prejudice that comes up with understanding people's genetic data? For example, I could think of, you know, we just had the COVID. If we knew that there was a certain gene that certain people reacted differently to this virus, that we separated them from the rest of the public.

That's an extreme example, but something that could be done with understanding people's genetic data.

[00:40:47] Yael Joffe: Yeah.

And be with a whole bunch of companies who launched the COVID genetic tests during the pandemic, who said, they're not, they're not wrong. So they, I just thought it was a good student. I thought that they rushed it. But basically they were saying is one of the fascinating things about COVID is why do some people get COVID and have such an awful response and died and had long?

And I'm getting lung COVID so long haul COVID and others who have COVID and kind of breeze past it, you know? So it is a brilliant conversation and it's entirely about spelling changes. And genetics and why some of us responded to COVID in one way and not in another way. So it's a really important conversation.

The thing about genetics, I get it. And there's a wonderful book. If you are interested in the topic called the gene, literally it's called the gene pastor Dr. Mukherjee, and the reason I love this book and it's great. It's an audio book, cause it's quite a big book, but is he brings the philosophy of genetics into the history of genetics.

And there's a wonderful chapter on eugenics, right? Eugenics is where we used to do. Two separate populations. So it's basically the foundation of the area and rates and Hitler, you know, we've got, but the interesting thing about eugenics is it didn't originate. The Gemini, it originated in the south of America, right?

Eugenics came from some Southern states of the USA where it's, I won't say anymore now, but essentially it's always been done. So genetics has always been kind of used by kind of the people on the wrong side of, of good to fail. Like I'm better than you or I'm within you. And I should separate from you that hasn't changed and that's part of history, but what we need to understand and always look at the balance is the good birth.

What, what is the good that we can get out of today? What is the bad that can come out of genetics and where does the power lie? And it's the same as we're going to have to be having conversations about stem cell research and you know, gene editing, CRISPR, it's all the same that all of these technologies have the ability to fold some of the great problems of human health and all of them in the hands of.

Other on people have the ability to work again, society. So, you know, for me, the, the important thing is the more good work we do. And the more we educate the consumer and because ultimately the consumers buying into the story of, of how genetics can be used, we obviously need to watch regulation and make sure we keep our data safe, that the individual has the right to their data and to protect their data.

So when you sign up with genetic testing company off the tough questions you wanted to see the privacy policies. Do you want to know who does the gen care things, how they've told you do. Do they destroy your DNA. But for me, there is an inevitability about genetics being part of our daily life. So ultimately we will have a DNA possible.

That is part of who we are. And every drug that we get will be based on our DNA, the dosage and the type of drug, the nutrition, we do the exercise, we do the meditation, we choose the genetics is hat, and we'll just become more of who we are. But as individuals, we, we can decide who we engage with by asking the tough calls, because they will always be evil posts out there who is looking to, to take genetics and use it to their own.

So this is not new. This is parked. I don't know if that's kind of untenable, but this is part of history. I know it has been the only differences. Continuous now have greater power.

[00:44:41] Brandon Stover: Yeah, no, thank you. That was what I was looking for. I mean, with new technology, new tools, it's up to us to decide how those are actually used. And thank you for recommending the book about bringing the philosophy side into the history of genetics. We'll put that in the show notes. I'd like to shift to your story a bit because it's very, very fascinating journey that you've had.

And you've had quite a journey getting into Nutrogenomix. But before we get to that part, you originally started in architecture and I too was originally in architecture before doing all the things I do now. What drew you to architecture?

[00:45:14] Yael Joffe: I never had any interest in science whatsoever or in healthcare or in medicine. None at all, actually. And I studied off of school and English and history, and those are my great passions, history, English, and art. And I was convinced I'd go to art school. My parents were horrified at that idea and I, and there probably weren't drawing.

I'm not sure I was a good enough article, but I, I loved art. And so I chose to architect actually because I was very academic and and it was, it was a degree that both art and academia together, really, I loved the, I loved the, the kind of science that that's behind the architecture. And I, I loved the fact that it would impact people's lives.

I loved architecture and I love the fact that it's still built a lot of creativity in Totally. I loved architecture. I had no issue with that, but then what happened was my Gran died from cancer and I was very close to my grand. I only had one grandparent and I spent an incredible amount of time.

She was very nurturing and she was really like my kind of caring person in my life. And by the time they discovered a cancer she was so far gone. They kind of went up and close that, you know, you've got a couple of months to live. There's nothing we can do. And this was in 19 80, 88, I think. So it was quite a while ago and the way that they treated her and the answers that they gave us as a family were active duty devastating. So first of all, there were no on food, right. So when I ask in my precocious, like 19 year old, Why did she get the cancer? What caused the cancer? What did she do in her life that made her get this cancer? Why didn't we know? How did we not pick it up earlier? Surely we could have treated her better. What could she have done to prevent it?

No one had any answer to me, but nothing. And they just shut me down. No one would talk to me. In fact, they wouldn't even talk to her, the horrible things. They wouldn't even tell her she had cancer. They said it would be better if she didn't there was, oh, you'll get better. And she was dead within a month.

And so when I was sitting next to her bed every day, kind of chatting to her, believing, I used to bring a chick, a vegetable soups, and smoothies in my naivety, the problem couldn't eat anything, but I had the desperation of trying to feed it. Some nutrition. I made a decision that that had to do something.

I had to do something to find the on food. Like I just wanted answers and that I would never forgive myself. I understand what had happened to her. And I dropped out of architecture school. Not because I didn't love it, that's love it, but because I just needed to know. And so I said, put them with journey again, extreme 90, which is maybe not a bad thing because it drives me places.

I'll looking for a degree in health. I wanted to study health and I wanted to answer the questions around my graph. And so I started phoning all the universities and asking for a degree in health, which you can imagine how funny that was in, in 1988. And They sent me to home economic. So a home economics where I could learn to bake, gone to make macaroni cheese and nuts.

And they sent me to food science. And obviously. And I knew that obviously there were no answers there. So the only one degree I could find that had an inkling of what I was looking for was dietetics. And, but I had no science. I had no science, I didn't study biology, but I didn't study any physical chemistry, which is prerequisite.

So I managed to talk my way into university. I don't think these days you can, but in those days you could. And I had to go and do like a bachelor of science degree in physics and chemistry, which was horrible. And I hated it and I didn't connect with it in any way, but I kind of suffered through it and finally got myself into the dietetics program.

And three, three weeks into the program, I was in tears. I was like, I always, you know, it's, it's, you know, there's one moment in your life that is so defining. And I was sitting in the lecture and the lecturer said, we've got a patient case study patients in hospital, they've come in with a heart attack and everything.

What are we going to feed them? And they had this image of Chopra taken on. And I was like, at that stage, I was like into eating macrobiotic. I was delivering with brown rice and steamed vegetables and kind of kimchi before kimchi was kimchi. And and I was like, what? And they were like chocolate cake.

And I was like, why would you give a chronically ill patient in a hospital? Jumpcut and they were like, got protein, it's got calories, it's got energy. It's got calcium vitamin D. And I knew at that moment that I would get this quality, this degree wasn't dissolved, like where the failure of failure. And I was only three weeks then, and that spent like two years trying to get into the program.

So it was a good day, but, and not left home to go to, you know, so I had to make a decision whether to, to leave and go do something else. And the only option was good in medicine where I knew I'd have more of the same. It wouldn't be any different or to just go back to architecture or go do something different.

Anyway, I decided to stay. And then another five horrible years in dietetics, basically arguing with my, my lectures all the time. I was a horrible student, got the degree. But had no answers at all, like five years later had not found a single answer. So I, I guess with African went backpacking as many specimens do to go and travel around Europe.

And because the south African Rand was so awful, I worked in a clinic in London to make some money before I can go check. And I was approached by this extraordinary woman, Dr. Roth Gill, Garrison, and she was an amazing visionary and geneticist. and she believed that the future of medicine was going to be nutrition and genetics together. And this is in 2000 and she was, she started a company. She was the only person in the company. She managed to get an angel investor and she was looking for a dietician to work with her, to help her build the first Nutrogenomix taste, nutrition, genetics, anyway.

And I was the only black person at the clinic. And she said, you know, when you come and spend three days with me in south Hampton. And I said, Sure.

like for me, it was a train ride and going to see a different city. And but there was something about, I knew nothing of what she was talking about. It was like Greek to me, but there was something about the compensation of this genetics that even though I didn't understand really what she was on about really intrigued.

[00:51:51] Brandon Stover: Hm,

[00:51:52] Yael Joffe: And at the end of the three days, she said to me, you know, you would you like to come work with me? And I was like, you know, I'd love to, but I know, honestly, I know nothing about genetics and I don't know that I could help. You need a dietician who specializes in genetics. And she said, well, I've touched the world

[00:52:08] Brandon Stover: They don't exist.

[00:52:09] Yael Joffe: aren't any, they don't exist.

I said, well, I'm, I would love to come with you. And I will learn, I will apply myself and learn, got myself a big tick book on genetics. And I'm joined than as a second employee. And we, we both, at the first, the company only lasted seven years. I moved to America with the company, but about three, four years, then I was getting quite grumpy because I realized that there were two genetic sets itself.

And number two units at the time that they got to do the really fun stuff, which is choose the genes and, you know, do the genetic research. And I've got to like write doc recommendation and I was long past like, so over that. So I discovered functional medicine and and knew that I needed to do more. I hadn't pulled my questions.

So I went back to university and I went back and I wanted to study Nutrogenomix but it didn't exist. And the, as a, as a degree, right. So I did a PhD and I put together my PhD. So I cobbled it together again, I don't know that I would've got away with it now, but then I managed to convince the department stood and put it in department of physiology.

And basically what I did was I got a genetic supervisor and nutrition supervisor, a biostatistician supervisor, and I put together a team that if you put them all together, they're made Nutrogenomix. And, and so I did the first PhD in Nutrogenomix and South Africa took me forever because I was working and having children, but it was, it was a really great experience.

I learned I was in a lab for two years doing my own genetic work, which was not, not great for my personality, but brilliant for me is understanding like the real core of genetics, which is what your little prepared and, you know, kind of doing gels and that's changed everything for me. I was always working in Nutrogenomix all through the time of doing my PhD, but when I came out, I felt that I really own enough knowledge to be able to be the geneticist and the nutritionist and, and really start building out education programs.

And which I did about the education company. I opened a clinic, a genetics clinic and building genetic tests that really would kind of come full circle. And, and, and it was only to be honest, it was only about five years ago, but I came in here like 15 years into my career where I felt that.

Found the answers that I was looking forward to my grant. So it wasn't, and it was, it was because I could close that loop of where you and I began our conversation of insight and action because the first 15 years of my career were all about inside the, the, the Jean barons. And it was only when I started understanding that feedback loop between understanding the sequence we inherit and then being able to change gene expression, that I got the answers that I was looking for for my grants.

So it was a very long journey, very, very long journey. But that's, and that's kind of where I ended up where I am now.

[00:55:10] Brandon Stover: Well, there's a couple of points I'd like to touch in your journey. The first is with, you know, your first mentor in the space, Dr. Gill, Garrison, and working in that first company, what did you, you know, what are one or two things that you really learned from that founder that would help you eventually launch your own company?

[00:55:27] Yael Joffe: Yeah. Then it had been like three extraordinary woman mentor mentor to me that that had been a really, I mean, I give full credit to them. It, in fact, I don't know if you've ever spoken to any of the founders of experiences, but it'd be four or five years. I hit a roadblock and every four or five years, I encounter a new mentor and it still happens to this day, you know?

things I actually gained most from Rutland was courage and vision that she had been in a way that no one had seen, had the courage and boldness to go out and start a company that had never been done in a country like England, which is the most conservative science company. It's a little bit better now, but in those days it was terrible in a field that no one had done.

And she, she, she was like, So I think the thing I got from most was to be courageous and bold and don't take no for an author to watch her navigate sitting at a table of men, of what men with money, who, who were on our board, who needed to fund the company. And, you know, here we are 20 years later, we're still partying that battle.

But, but she, she was one of the most courageous and visionary and smart woman. And that's what I took from her mostly. And she gave me the courage to go out and study genetics and believe that I could kind of forge ahead in the same way that she had.

[00:57:01] Brandon Stover: Well, you've also been a part of several other startups, including a company selling emergency bracelets and then a company focused on DNA testing. And then teaching afterwards, when you, you know, got the expertise in Nutrogenomix, as you went through each one of these opportunities, how were you assessing if this is the right solution or having the impact that you actually wanted before moving onto the next thing?

[00:57:25] Yael Joffe: So I don't think that I've ever felt that I had enough impact. So I don't think so. My reasons for moving on something else have never been, because I'm satisfied with the impact that I've had. I don't know that an up and chopping your and it's taken me about 25 years to call myself an entrepreneur.

Like I've never owned that title, but I think now I own it, you know, with tricks for genetics. I feel like even though, as you say, I keep on starting companies is that I think it's the feeling. You never having enough impact that actually drive you onto the next thing. And so I've left companies for different reasons, mostly because I felt that we weren't having enough impact that we had locked away in terms of being brave and courageous.

So some of the genetic testing companies that are founded and, and be part of, and so in a closed, but DNA life was a very big one that I was part of the seven years. We founded with Teddy man-style. I left because I felt that they weren't pushing the boundaries enough. They'd become too complacent. And that's this whole user experience and really engaging with the practice.

I just felt that they weren't, they were too focused on the commercial model and not on changing the industry and change it. So that one, I left genetic for a couple of years. Often when I was totally burnt out after totally burnt out. And I just needed a couple of years off from genetics and I started a company doing emergency bracelets and tags that you haven't graded upon your ship.

Cause I used to go running in the mountains and I was always worried up be attacked by mountain night and no one would know who I was and I, I, and I'd never actually founded the company. I bought a book, you know, I had to write a business plan and I followed this book how to write a business plan. And then I, you know, so that was actually the first company that I completely founded myself and.

As I say, like I had to learn how to write a business plan and did everything. I was like a one woman show and then hijack one company I sold to my sister who was actually better at running up the me she's the principal person. And then she sold it to someone in Africa. And when you can launch it in the UK and the one in South Africa just hold it and all of that.

So actually it wasn't a breakfast speak cause I was much more into genetics, but it's beautiful to watch how they've taken it and made it into a fantastic business and really had a great impact. So I realized. Every four or five years, I generally hit a roadblock of discontent and disillusionment where I look back at the four or five years that I've been in.

And I'm like that wasn't good enough. Like, I haven't had the impact. I'm not reaching enough people. I'm not changing eyes. I'm not, not about commercial success. It's, it's never it's right around. Like, I'm just not happy. It's not good enough. And that is the, in my, you know what you've been doing it for 25 years. The idea is you can look back and talk to your pet. And I've now can almost check my pattern that every four or five years I go and I can pull garbage where I go to, I go look for ideas on how I've worked out. That I go to conferences that are not in my field.

That's the way I do it. I go to a conference that is not in genetics, nutrition, and I go traveling. And somehow between the two, I come back and I realized what I was missing. And then I kind of launched into my next and that is what I, I often give, like recommend other Japanese. Like you will never feel content.

Like, it's just, I think it's the nature of the game. Like if you're feeling content, you're probably not even shopping yet.

[01:01:04] Brandon Stover: Yeah, well, your father was a serial entrepreneur. You're obviously a serial entrepreneur. What are a few key lessons that maybe you're teaching your children about building solutions and businesses and all that?

[01:01:15] Yael Joffe: Yeah.

I think it's actually like it's absorbed in the ethos because my kids quite in trying to do it and we often talk about business idea that they've done a table, which is very funny. Mostly it's my son is dying. He's only nine and he wants to buy another Funko pop, but that's fine, whatever drives it, you know?

So I think, you know, when I'm affect festival, as I said, I never called myself as an entrepreneur and telethon. And they kept on telling me that I was in trapping there and I said, okay, fine. I'll own it. I really never intended to be one. I never set out to be one. I said, I could be a scientist and to solve the problem with cancer.

And but what you said what's interesting is my father was a serial entrepreneur. Brilliant, brilliant. Total nonacademic then finished school, had no value for academics whatsoever. Wasn't interested in me getting a degree in any shape or form. And he would, we always spoke about was business. You know, I was working every holiday.

Every time I in his business, we didn't have a choice. And we were selling on the sales floor when I was like, Hey, you know, and, and he had, cause we had no value for my degree. And I was devastated. Like I was like, I was like, didn't even notice when I finished school kind of thing. So I would kind of NT the interrupt in your life.

You know, I was going to be the big academic in the family and despite him, and, but what I actually look back on my life and I laugh and I was like who he was and his talent entrepreneurship put so much part of me, even though I was in complete denial for the first couple of decades and how much I learned at the dinner table, as we say, which I'm proud of not having with my kids.

And the thing that he taught me most is courage and boldness. Oh, he was, he was like alive. He, he was fearless. He would, he would take on and bold things. That everyone else said would fail. And sometimes they did. And that's the other thing he taught me. He had as many successes as he had failures, we would be millionaires one day and have nothing.

The next day we would, we would never wealthy because we will always in between having a company and not having a company. And so I think that was a great gift, you know, that's, that's, he would pick himself up and he would start another business. Just like we, once we had a whole warehouse burned down, I'm BP decimated the company and you literally like.

Got out of the stock that he could, that wasn't destroyed by the fire and went like opened a little shop and he just, he had this spirit that you, he would just pick himself up and start again, pick himself up and start again. And he would never, ever listen to anyone telling him that it couldn't be done. And, and so, you know, it was, it's an amazing story that only in the last that continues, it's like, you're my child. Like, you know, I'm very proud of you because now of course I'm going to drop it. Yeah. You know? So he loves the fact that I've actually, he knows exactly what I'm doing, but he loves the fact.

And I really believe I got it from him. You know, that I said it wasn't intentional, but, and that's the only thing. The only advice I give to people, if you've got an idea, be bold and courageous, don't listen to none and failure really. Isn't the end of the world. Like seriously, it's just momentary and.

[01:04:43] Brandon Stover: Yeah. Well, it sounds like that spirits helped you a lot as you're forging this new field in Nutrogenomix, as you talked about earlier, like going to conferences and things, and people calling you a leper and you know, this is never going to work out. How did you continue to sell this idea and like push this field forward with all that happening?

[01:05:04] Yael Joffe: It was, I mean, I've made it up, probably made it easier than it was. It was horrible. I mean, it was, it w it was so hard and that's why I say no one chooses to be an entrepreneur yet, because it's easier to have a job with a Saturday. And

I have spent years. Killing my ideas. I know that's, that's the joke, you know, you're a salesman, no matter what you doing, I felt like that's what you are.

It doesn't matter whether you're a scientist, geneticist, yourself person. And for three or four, it took me years to get funding years. And in fact, I was like, no one was listening to me. And I, you know, you talk to every person that, you know, you call everyone, you know, it's, it's horrible, like getting funding.

It doesn't matter what, where you are in the business. It took horrible. And I actually had got to the point where I was ready to give up. I had tried to start incubators. I tried and I had was absolutely I would send and ready to give up and winter dinner party with friends and I was miserable and grumpy.

I was jet lagged from flying over to San Francisco to try and get into an incubator. Like, and I I've given myself like a couple of weeks and I was done. I was going to, I dunno what I was going to do. I, I mean, I always find something to do, but I was going to give up my dream of streaks for genetics. I was done and, and had done.

And a friend of mine had sold his business and he had a bit of money and he was like, what are you up to these days? And I was like, you know what, it's Friday night, I'm tired. I've been pitching the whole week. I don't want to talk about it. Like, I just don't think about it really. What are you doing anyway?

And I said, well, I've had this dream for a new genetics company, blah blah. And that was my attitude. I was like, I just want to keep my like Donna in peace and quiet. I'm tired anyway. And he was like, that sounds really amazing. And I, you know, I've got a bit of money and and, but everyone is up to you.

Everyone's pleased, I'm interested. And then nothing happens. That was, you know, like you get the 11th hour with a hundred people. And then they pull out leave. That is the world of uptime to build a company and a Monday morning and called me to have coffee. And tell me now that you not the grumpy anymore, like tell me, and I'm good.

And within a month he did his due diligence. And by January he founded it as an angel investor. And by may, we don't stop this product, but I was accidental. So you look back on it, it will seem like a fairy tale, but the reality is no one chooses to be an entrepreneur. It is so hard, you know, lying awake at night, trying to figure out how you're going to pay salaries, you know, and even when your company is successful electric, now you're still going from funding round to funding because you're expanding and scaling.

So, you know, it's, it's it just, I don't think that I was ever, I ever chose this journey. I just feel like it shows me that I keep on pushing. I just want to do better. I want to have an impact. I'm wondering the crowns. I mean, I have to say that now I'm starting to feel like I can breathe a bit and say like I'm having the impact that I wanted to have, but you know, we like 30 years in and I'm starting to go, actually, I can take a bit of time off to go something now, you know, not, not too much, but a little bit of thumps coming because I'm surrounded by the amazing team.

And maybe fi who I feel like it's not all on my shoulders and that I can go swimming. But that has been like 30 years in the making. So I don't think, you know, I always say I'm gonna retire and everyone just walked with me one day, I'm going to retire. And they just offered me because I do think that you're always compelled to move forward.

It's like an inertia. So I'm not sure that again, it's.

[01:08:50] Brandon Stover: well, before I get to my last few questions, I'd like to leave our listeners with some action steps on some of the things we talked about today. So how should someone start, you know, running their own N of one experiments and start taking responsibility for their own health?

[01:09:04] Yael Joffe: you know, find a good genetics company. It doesn't have to be mine. And peace out about who you like. It's just the most beautiful thing when you, when you can know what you don't know and you think, you know yourself, right. Because. There's so many stories with tele-health about our health and our health journey.

That may not be true. So ask some tough questions, find the best genetic testing company, get a genetic test done. Start your journey of knowing who you are and taking responsibility. And then there's all kinds of planning things happening with wearables. We, some, some really exciting testing when you can go deeper, once you start with a test and you can know what you don't know, you could start going deeper into checking yourself with wearables wearing.

I mean, I use them, I use the whole little devices in the ordering. I have a Garmin watch understanding how I'm sleeping, how I'm feeling, how I'm recovering. It's it's been the big thing for forcing me to take some risks connect with a practitioner that really gets you and understands you and is you, and it may not be the person you think of NFP.

A medical doctor might be a natural path. It might be a chiropractor. It might be a health coach. Get support from coaches. They're amazing. Remember that coaches help with behavioral change. So they may not be the best, the best practitioners. But if you want to change your daily, decision-making get help.

I got a health coach and I've been doing this for 2030 years. Like reach out and build the best team around you and start walking an amazing journey. And don't think it's ever too late. It's never too late to know who you are, how you exist in the world, around you and how you can make better decisions.

[01:10:46] Brandon Stover: I think that's excellent advice surrounding yourself with the technology, the tools and the people, and to really build a team for yourself to understand yourself better.

Is there anything you would like to leave listeners with today that we didn't speak about them already?

[01:11:00] Yael Joffe: Wow, Brandon, we have spoken about so much the only, I think we've covered more than any other podcasts that. Cold water. Cold water is the most cold water. Immersion is the most healing thing, anxiety, depression, fatigue any, any really anything like Hyatt? It could be five minutes. It could be a cold sour.

Really? I know we've spoken about it, but I'm just, I'm going to push it again because I don't think people really understand how powerful is as a healing modality to even just have a hot tower. And the last couple of minutes turn on the cold. It is the most beautiful healing. And of course meditation, if you can, I know we've touched on it, but I'm just going to flag it one more time and broccoli and broccoli.

[01:11:48] Brandon Stover: And broccoli. All right. Well, my last question is how can we push the world to evolve?

[01:11:52] Yael Joffe: well, we're trying, I think the most important thing is for all of us to take responsibility for our own journey, you know, there's a, the way that the government and the food system is so patriarchal that we feel like we don't have control over how we manage our health, the food that we eat, the decisions that we make.

And I think then, you know, the government

health institutions are never going to solve our problems for us. So, you know, we're the ones that are suffering and we are the ones you remember every single minute on every day, you are making a decision that will drive you to health or away for it. And by health, I mean, mental health, physical.

Overall health. And until we all take individual responsibility, we will never ever evolve as, as, as a community.

[01:12:43] Brandon Stover: It's such a powerful message. Yo, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was a fantastic interview. Loved your stories and the things that you guys are doing at three X, four genetics. I think it's going to be powerful things for taking responsibility of our health in the future.

[01:12:57] Yael Joffe: Thanks, Brandon. It's been a Wonderful. conversation. Thanks so much.

[01:13:01] Brandon Stover: Thank you for listening to the evolve. Podcasts links to everything we discussed today are available in the show. Notes. Transcripts are also available in the show notes and everything can be viewed on our website at evolve. The doc world that's evolve the.world.

My one ask for you is to share this episode with others. If you know someone who is interested in social impact, social entrepreneurship, or just making a difference in the world, please share this episode. The challenges in our world need all of those who can contribute to existing solutions or create entirely new ones. so please share the show with those kind intelligent people who are just like you until next time my friend keep evolving.

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