Our genes tell us so much about our health. Having access to genetic information can help inform our decisions and shape our future health and well-being. Sitting at the intersection between genetics and health is Sherry Zhang, an obesity genomics researcher, a health tech entrepreneur, and the founder of GenoPalate—a leading direct-to-consumer digital health tech provider of personalized nutrition. In this episode, Sherry joins us to talk about genetic health, what’s been missing in healthcare, and the big solution her company offers to empower you more about your health. She digs deep into the genetics of obesity, the relation between genetics and our lifestyles, and the importance of doing genetic tests in getting tailor-fit solutions for your health concerns and choices. What Sherry offers in today’s conversation will have you appreciate the uniqueness of our DNAs, opening our eyes to a future of health that is designed for you. So tune in now to not miss out!
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The Future Of Genetic Health – A Conversation With Sherry Zhang
In this episode, we have Dr. Sherry Zhang who’s a molecular biologist as well as a health tech entrepreneur and is doing a lot of interesting things in the intersection between genetics and health. Welcome, Sherry. Can you tell us a little bit about what you’re doing and how it’s going to help the future?
Thank you for having me, Dr. Awesome. This is a great show and program. A little bit about myself, I grew up in Northern China. I call it the Boston of China. We talk about the backgrounds a little bit. It was a charming town. I grew up there. I always want to find the truth about life. Science is eventually what I chose as the approach. I love animals, people, and solving problem at a core of my nature. That shows me to pursue my PhD in America. I came here many years ago and I got my PhD in Microbiology.
I had an awesome time in pursuing exactly what I had passion for, which is finding the truth, creating new knowledge, knowing a problem, and trying to solve it with science and technology. That’s how I started as a technologist and a pioneer in obesity and metabolic syndrome. I know you’re a surgeon so you must resonate with the drive of solving the obesity epidemic. It’s a pandemic. It’s a global issue.
When I started the Obesity Genetics at Medical College of Wisconsin, which happened to house one of the most well-founded and NIH-supported longitudinal study for obesity and metabolic syndrome, I studied with the person who coined the definition of central obesity, the pear and apple shapes we grow up with. He was Dr. Ahmed Kissebah who is no longer with us, unfortunately. I continue his work into whole genome sequencing and genotyping. I correlate that elements that everybody share.
We brought in this fantastic ancestry that we evolve for two and a half million years. A lot of them has to do with the food environment our ancestors lived in. The mutations came in all the time, but the mutation was settled in and became a permanent feature of our genomic pattern when it brings us some advantage for survival usually.
That’s how this mutations develop into the diversities between you and me and everyone out there. Everybody is very unique at the nutritional ancestry. I have a way to read into that and also associate that with how we solve the metabolic issues with genetic and beyond. I had a lot of fun doing that. Long story short, it wasn’t quick and deep enough.
We talk about the future here. The future is in front of us in terms of obesity genetics and to apply to people’s health, but because of the system and how we approach it from healthcare and home testing at the time wasn’t a thing, there’s not enough access. I’m all about access to health. Genetic information is something fundamentally essential. Everybody should have that readily available to inform your food decisions, Also, to empower the person and your healthcare team right to leverage. That’s missing. It’s a big problem with a big solution and a universally applicable solution.
A few years ago now, I founded my organization called the GenoPalate to combine the individual awesomeness and unique pattern of genomic DNA and apply that to daily nutritional food decisions for metabolic health. Now, we’re one of the leading US nutrigenomics platforms and serves some of the largest cohorts and populations in the field. I am very happy that I am able to deliver and apply my knowledge to solving people’s problem in health.
It’s a huge problem. I don’t disagree with that at all. I wonder how much you would say is contributed from your genetics versus lifestyle decisions. It’s very subjective to me. It’s something that people talk about. It’s the genetics of obesity, but I don’t know if most people know how much of a contributing factor it is.
There is a very quantitative way to marry that. In genetics, we call it the heritability of each trait. You probably know about it. It is every clinical phenotype like the trait and the symptom. For example, the BMI or the Body Mass Index. That’s usually clinically useful to screen patients in different obesity categories. BMI of 20 to 25 is normal, 25 to 30 is overweight, and 30 above is so obese, except if you are an NFL player. They have lots of body mass. It doesn’t mean you’re not fit. For normal people, we use that.
For BMI, in my lab where I as a principal investigator published a paper in the Obesity Journal a few years ago to exactly demonstrate how much is the obesity index or the BMI is genetically determined. That will vary slightly from ethical backgrounds, whether it’s a Caucasian, Asian, or a mix of them. Also, Black and Hispanic. It will vary, but more or less, we stabilize at about 30% is genetically determined for BMI.
If you talk about central obesity using DEXA scan or more refined like that, we can also measure using the same statistical tool. To give you another example, HDL in the population, which is the Caucasian cohort that I study has a genetic determination of up to 70%. It’s very high. That means that 30% is due to environmental choices like what you eat and if you exercise. The majority of your HDL cholesterol, which is the good fat in our blood and a wellness check every year supposedly is determined by genetics.
That’s for overall BMI, but for the central obesity, is it the same? Is it about 30% for central obesity?
The obesity I believe in our cohort is exactly more than 30%. You can pretty much a picture anything metabolic health related traits. For example, blood pressure, inflammatory cytokines, and things like that. Interleukin-1 and 6 is what we use to marry information because obesity is a low-grade chronic inflammation state. Also, glucose and insulin resistance. All of that will fall into 30% to 70% genetically determined. It’s pretty significant. It also makes me feel we’re missing that data point for everybody.
Are there multiple genes that contribute to this or is it just one gene? If it’s multiple genes, if I do a genetic test similar to what your company offers, how would you help me become less obese?
We call it the polygenic model. Anything that we talk about here, especially lifestyle or dietary-related chronic diseases including lots of the metabolic traits all the way to cancer usually is polygenic. It means multiple genes. It’s a symphony playing. They are the master genes. The multiple small guys will do the job and on and so forth. It’s usually 2, 3, or even more tiers of cascades. It’s not only one single gene linear. It’s very complicated when it comes to obesity-related metabolic.
In a way, it’s complex and that’s why it’s so hard to tackle. We haven’t figured it out yet, even with the obesity drug. We can dive into it another time, but it’s complex. If you want to treat it the natural way, which I believe is the best way like using food as medicine, you need to understand all these interplay, not to mention there’s a gene and environment interplay through the epigenetic mechanism, which I study also.
The best way is to use food as medicine.
For your case study you talk about as an example, my company has a proprietary algorithm or read those polygenic genotypes after we screen your genetic material at the lab. We have a way to process multi-dimensional data points and then using that to drive the recommendations for what kind of foods you eat and how do you eat them in a simple term.
Give me an example of some recommendations that you might give to somebody like myself. I’m of South Asian descent. My dad wasn’t obese but he was a little overweight. I’m trying myself to make sure that I don’t follow that trajectory. Let’s say I give you this genetic test. What would be some similar type of recommendations that you would make for someone like myself?
I gave us a webinar to our members. We talked about aging and weight. The underlying aging processes the key without understanding that counting calories and then outdoor focusing on appearance. It’s not going to be relevant. The point there is as we go through all those fantastic life force, losing weight is the best way to be healthy aging. I talk about positivity always. It’s great that you have that in mind.
I always have five parts to lose to share with you even though I’m healthy. That makes you vibrant. That makes you better and more productive. To give you an example, there’s a well-characterized gene called FTO. The device is cool too. It’s easy to memorize. FTO genotype is confirmed that association with all sorts of nuances about obesity and eating. What kind of food you eat with certain genotype will situate you for higher or lower BMI later. There are a lot of nuances and a lot of story with it.
There are different pathways that you’re going to put you through. It’s all about the interplay between your genotype of FTO and how you do your life. It is replicated in essentially all ethical backgrounds. Your background and my background, Caucasian, Black and so on and so forth. It’s universally applicable and also we did as a society, we studied the different age groups like children, childhood obesity, adolescence, adults, and the elder.
It’s all there. To give you example. Without knowing your fantastic genotype yet, but when you do, we can detect whether you have the allele A which is a risky allele for BMI or higher weight when you eat the same food versus T. In my case, I have a hybrid or heterozygous for that location. It’s one location. One from your mother and one of your father if we go back to high school genetics. I don’t know which one from which but I got one copy which is a high risk and the other is lower risk from my parents. When we combine it, I’m in the middle point.
For people who have double of the risky allele, the allele for FTO locus and you have increased obesity susceptibility. It’s always a starting point without knowing where you are and your other factors in your life and lifestyle. That’s a risk assessment but it’s very helpful for people who have that 1 or 2 of the risky allele to have a more tailored prevention regiment. There are a lot of details we are providing in our recommendation provided by a registered dietitian.
I had a chance to look at your website and one of the sample recommendations was you should choose blackberries over raspberries or something like that. What are some other trickle down basic recommendations that somebody like myself might get from your program? Something like maybe you shouldn’t eat rice after 6:00 PM. I don’t know enough about the nutritional aspects of genetics to know what types of recommendations would be tailored for a person.
There are a lot of details. The best way is to do the test and get it from the reports.
Did you do the test at all?
Yes. I always do.
What are some recommendations that you had for from the test?
One example we talked about is FTO. From that point, our digital recommendation drafted by our RD and science team would be eating certain quantity and quality of protein, fat, and carbohydrates to have balance that is individualized or personalized to my genetics. It’s not a one-size fits all. The whole point that we’re doing this is to have the macro nutrients and the distribution daily, weekly, and so on.
You talk about something important. It’s timing We don’t think about that enough. There’s intermittent fasting. It has been effective for lots of people. Deep down, the biological clock is playing a role. There’s another very fascinating study too and the topic is the circadian rhythms in our cells, organs, tissues, and the whole body. They have different clocks everywhere like in your brain, liver and so on and so forth. I’m sure you read about it.
We have a special report called the Eating Behavior Report. It’s one of my favorite reports. As long as it has a robust genetic evidence, we can report. Right now, we have three. One is essential. It covers all your macronutrients, micronutrients, and substances like lactose. I’m lactose intolerant based on that. I take a lactate from time to time. There is gluten, alcohol, and caffeine. People use that a lot daily. Beyond that, there’s a food eating behavior report based on genetics. There’s a stress report. Some of the traits overlap. For example, there’s a genotype that will tell you how you are a stress eater. That’s a behavior too.
I can tell you right now, I’m stress eater.
We have to find out which allele do you have. If you have two copies of the higher risk, then you say, “Okay.” It validates your behavior. That’s something very curious and interesting because only you know that’s the behavior. If you have the gene, do you really do it? We have a feedback study. We ask you the question and you confirm. We can do study when we have lots of data points in what we do.
It’s very interesting and I hope that answers a little bit. With that, we can be able to tailor. If you’re stress eating or when you have a stressor, these are the things. You have Happy Meal. You have to tackle the stress and that’s the causal element. Also, treat that and at the same time, let’s use the food, nutritional planning, and exercise. It will make you happier and help you deal with it.
Nutritional planning and exercise will make you happier.
That’s interesting. One of the in cool things about your website is that you can transfer genetic information from other tests like the 23andMe, Ancestry, or whatever. You can transfer it over and you can still give me the same data, which I think is cool because I have done one of those tests. I had to do it when my wife is pregnant. They had a genetic workup for all the different inheritable diseases for my daughter. We wanted to make sure that we anticipated those things.
I’m looking forward to doing that but one of the things I think that I get a lot of pushback from people is the fact that your genetic DNA information is out there. The idea of having that information out there in a world where nothing is private anymore. It’s something that’s always hanging over the head of social media, the photos that we take, and everything like that. What would you say to those people that are hesitant to get the genetic test because of privacy concerns?
That’s a great topic to discuss and we get to be asked a lot. There are some people who are super interested in their nutritional genomics and have all the reasons to use that for their healthcare. It’s because they have that fear and they will not be able to have gain access through our kinds of services. That’s a bummer. As a user first, also, I’m data scientist by training. You go through all these experience-related to what we’re talking about privacy.
I always say genetic or your DNA is the most private thing you can have. It’s a real right to protect it and it’s a privilege when you give it to a third party or provider like us. GenoPalate treat with top care. We treat is as if we treat our own data. We’ll never do anything that we don’t want to be. That’s a good principle. It’s still a little Wild West when it comes to consumer genomics, but it is so much needed. It’s necessary to give people the access.
Your genetic DNA is the most private thing you can have. You have all the right to protect it and it should be a privilege when you give it to a third party or provider.
To your practical question, I would recommend to your audiences to pay attention to the terms of use, the policy, and description of the provider you’re interested in making sure they will do something like we talked about. We are very different from some of the big brands out there because due to multiple reasons, loots of them will ended up with monetizing on the data. I trust that they identify them and so on so forth but when you do, you open a portal to another big player or another partner and then that partner has others. It propagates from there.
If you don’t like your data to be used or distributed that way, you just make sure you’re provider has a close door business model. That’s what GenoPalate believes in as well. It’s what we are doing. We think that there are plenty of business study and research that we can do with that closed ecosystem so we could really service that person better. With that principle, you’ll be able to tailor a good practice around privacy and we go with all the golden standard.
We always invest the best infrastructure to support the identification. It is a big one. People have to give us payment information and address to ship our kit to you. We know who you are from the transaction perspective and then we got your DNA but we tailor from day one because that’s how I wanted it to be created. It’s exactly why we talked about protection of privacy. Our system will be identified as to realms of data.
For me, if you become a new customer, I have no way to associate your DNA information with your personal information. That’s very key and good companies knowing what they do with this principle will do that first but not always. Not everyone and not every business. The other one is encryption. We make sure it’s using the very safe clouds and it’s as safe as your healthcare data because we apply HIPAA-compliance. We make sure those practices are in place.
The idea of monetization doesn’t worry me too much. If you have aggregates of large amounts of genetic information, I want that information to be out there so people can get consumer benefit out of it, but I think what worries people the most is the idea that somehow that genetic information will be used against them.
For example, a lot of my inspiration is from science fiction as you can see by my background. One of the most common dystopian science fiction movies that people talk about is Gattaca where you have this stratification of the society based on genetics. Everybody’s worried about that. It had such a big impact factor for genetics in general. When I’m sitting and talking to my friends, it’s the first movie that comes up and everybody’s like, “Aren’t you worried about a Gattaca-type of scenario?” Personally, I don’t think it’s realistic. How do you feel about that? It’s because you’re in the field. I’m sure you must have people that are talking about that.
That’s one of my favorite movies. It’s so insightful the way they speak about genetics and how they apply it from a sci-fi perspective is brilliant. From the book to the movie. I hope they would redo it. It will be cool.
Ethan Hawking with Thurman, I don’t want them redo it. Even now, it holds up. The way that they have the architecture is so futuristic. It’s still very good.
That insightful kind of scary part of predicting the future with technological details. It’s a possibility. It’s about how we approach it and how eventually the government have to have a big play and they do right now. So far, it’s been all positive in my opinion where early on they have GINA which is a protection against discrimination. You’ll be breaking the law if you try to discriminate your employee, for example. If you have, for example, cancer. You have a 50-year male and you happen to have access. Number one, it shouldn’t, even given the employer access.
There’s a lot of measure to ensure that and at the same time, if they have the access through the medical officer or whatever, you couldn’t use. In this case, imagine this individual who is 50 years old have high cancer genetics and you’re about to hire it as a person or you are evaluating for performance for the next year. What you do is the longevity of this person’s employment, you will be breaking the law if you use that information to the decision to apply to any.
That’s only here in the US, correct?
There’s a European version of it. I’m not familiar with the details, but I know it’s a global consortium.
Is China in the global consortium? Do you know?
I have to look. It doesn’t involve my motherland. I’m practicing everything here but as you now, China used to be the biggest sequencers and probably still. They process a lot a lot of genomes and they also do services.
Credit to China. I thought there was a Chinese scientist that did genetic editing of a series of twins that made them HIV resistant but also, it was the same gene that increased intelligence. Are you familiar with that story?
I’ve heard about it.
They were discredited and all this stuff but honestly, credit to them for pushing the envelope because genetic treatments, unless a country does something like that, will never become mainstream. That’s what I look forward to as a physician is that a lot of these genetic conditions not only can we prevent them from lifestyle modifications like what your advocating for but also, for actual treatments that can change people’s DNA. How do you feel about that? It’s not here yet, but it’s coming.
Do you mean something like CRISPR-Cas to modify?
Yes.
China is also pretty advanced in trying that for a terminal ill people or leukemia. There’s no other way. It’s ethical to approach that or at least try. In that model, I would agree everywhere to apply that because a CRISPR-Cas, as you know, is probably the most powerful genetic editing technology ever developed. You could target multiple loci which is unheard of. I started off with cloning of one gene at a time. It takes years for one to even have the chance to settle in. It’s a powerful thing. There are a lot of pharmaceutical and stem cell companies or organ regeneration. Also, aging companies.
What an exciting time to be a molecular biologist. I see all of these things that are happening right now and they’re so interesting. You highlighted aging. The whole longevity space has never existed before and all of these treatments. I look forward to twenty years where we’re going to be with all this stuff.
To finish on the point where you started with that great question. Cosmetic and anti-aging longevity is also last regulated and a concern for the medical practice part. It could be denied and we’ll probably see a lot of gene editing in that so your skin look younger or you don’t have gray hair when you’re 60, and things like that. It will happen, and then allele regeneration and heart for people have burned skin because of any fire and things like that. This will come very handy. A stem cell is going to have a lot of breakthroughs. They already have a lot of transformational advancements. Genetic definitely will play a lot of impact there.
That’s going to be interesting. For example, in my field, there are a lot of craniofacial disorders that are genetically based. We know the gene. We know the abnormal protein and it makes these tumors on the face or something like that. For example, there’s one pathology called cherubism. Right around like 8 or 9, they start growing these tumors in the face and it’s a brutal treatment. It’s a surgical treatment. I have to go in there and remodel the way that these bony tumors appear.
It’s like mowing the grass. Every single decade, I have to go in and I have to remodel this person’s face. It’s tough. It’s a lot of scar tissue. It’s a big difficult surgery. I look at that and I’m thinking, “This is low-hanging fruit.” If we could turn that gene off and give them a normal life that would be avoiding all of these unnecessary surgeries. I look forward to that day and I feel like it’s something that people feel differently about depending on the person.
If you have a very conservative person, they look at it as something that’s not something that we should be doing. You have other people who are like, “That’d be amazing. This would be life-changing for so many different people.” That’s the way that we can think about the future in genera. You can think about it in a very pessimistic view or you can think about it in an optimistic view.
I choose to be an optimist about it. I still think we’re in infancy stages, but what an exciting time. There are so many interesting things that are happening. What are you looking forward to you being a molecular biologist and you seeing all this stuff first hand? What do you looking forward to that’s coming down the pipeline?
There are probably two directions. One, building on everything we talked about, having access to your genetic pattern to inform you and your caretaker team to make sure you have a long productive life is a human right and we should do everything. The challenge we talked about are real. Those are big problems but that can be solved if we have the right strategy. If I have a crystal ball, I think I see 50% or more of all of us, hopefully, Americans and beyond all have our genetic DNA fully sequenced.
Our children, on day one, they do the congenital screening at birth and then deposit in a centralized place. It is safe. People know what they’re doing and they can access it. They derive all decisions and stuff from day one like nutrition. That’s how you get strong and prevent a lot of things from happening. Also, not to mention all these congenital disease that you could solve right away with that empowerment. That’s number one. By the way, Icelanders or smaller countries with different kind of Social Security Healthcare System have done that. It’s not unheard of. It can be done.
Number two is also what we talked about. It is a longevity. We have this new twelve molecular cellular level breakthroughs in finding the twelve hallmarks of aging from the research perspective. We at GenoPalate down the road, you’ll probably see a pipeline where we’d be able to measure your biological clock.
I didn’t know that. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? It’s because I thought that methylation of DNA was the marker for aging but you’re saying there are twelve other ones.
They’re all called a hallmarks of aging. For example, we were discussing with our customer members an education program. I talked about a dysfunctional of mitochondria. That’s a huge one because over the aging process, you, me, and everybody are inevitably going to go through this process where we’re going to lose our masses like our bone mass, lean mass, and fat mass eventually after 55 or 65. It depends if you’re a man or a woman on average.
During that process, we’re going to have significant progressive loss just by nature of the muscle mass. With that, the mitochondria quantity and function will decline dramatically. There’s a great study or more now showing if you compare a 20-year-old to 70 and you look at their skeletal muscle biopsy, the function and the quantity of your mitochondria, which is the energy powerhouse, it’s declined to only one-third when it’s compared to when you’re twenty.
It’s happening and that’s one of the two. Associated with those mitochondria because it’s happening in metabolic tissues like the liver, muscles, and heart. It’s associated with something called a nutrient insensitivity signaling. It becomes insensitive to nutrient. That’s why when we did a survey when you’re 35 or 45, you started to have this feel that’s real. The physiological changes article changes makes you feel you can no longer eat and drink and party like you’re 25. Everything sits there. It’s real. It’s called cellular garbage. That’s why caloric restriction or fasting. That’s another topic another time.
As you’re talking, so many light bulbs are going off in my head. I appreciate you.
It’s an amazing time for that. I anticipate or something will be applied to everybody. I hope we see that because we have 40 or 50 productive years ahead of us in yours and my shoes. That where the magic happens. I do think by some sort of interventional guidance, we could elongate everybody’s productive years. The house span and life span is different right now. We can shorten that gap by quite a bit.
It’s interesting some of the things that you have insight that I don’t because just like what you were saying initially about the coupling of someone’s genetic information with guidance from healthcare professionals. That doesn’t exist right now. At least, not in my hospital system that I work at. Maybe it does from a cancer perspective or very edge cases or very isolated but it’s literally the building blocks of how we’re formed. It’s our DNA and our genetics.
There needs to be more of a role for healthcare to get involved with the whole genetic aspect right now. It’s a little bit too separate. I look forward to that day. You’re doing it in a smart way in coupling it to the nutritional aspect because that doesn’t necessarily need to have a doctor involved. It doesn’t need to have any treatment. It’s all lifestyle choices. Once people start thinking of like, “My genetics play a role in my health,” then they’re going to start asking for it.
That’s going to be an interesting time to see because you’re right. There are a lot of genetic aspects. For example, with cholesterol as what you were saying. I know that because they tried to edit the gene of a number of patients who had this high cholesterol genetic condition. It might have been familial hypercholesterolemia. The point being is that we’re on the cutting edge right now. We’re just wading our feet into these kind of genetic interventions. It’s an interesting time to be a molecular biologist. You’re starting out with nutrition. Are you guys going to be offering longevity services soon in your genetic testing?
In my crystal ball, yes. We have so much to do and so many directions as you can imagine. We have potential roadmaps that we could make a bigger deal for the society. It is just a little bit on the healthcare. I came from one of the best hospital in treating obesity. Genetics is not there to help them. It’s one of the reasons that I came out of that system, and now, I’m trying to build something that works and viable and to take it back.
That will be my home run in order to go back not to disrupt. I’m not a believer of we create something to disrupt something. It’s time to change that for better because we call the healthcare as a sick care. We have a problem. We go in there. We fix it. For a lot of things, it is greatly helpful. Modern medicine is fantastic, but for a chronic diseases, reversible diseases, dietary-related, or lifestyle-related, you cannot do that. It’s to extensive. It’s not practical. It’s not enjoyable. That’s why we need to do that.
We need to help people to maintain wellness outside of the healthcare hospital and hopefully, work with the hospital, your physicians, or doctors to prevent that. When that happens, we hopefully treat that early enough so it doesn’t go too bad. There are so many directions but as we talk about, aging should be treated as a disease, but it’s not.
If you look at NIH funding, there’s an aging institute that used to be little compared to others. We are still talking about hundred millions and billions of dollars, but compared to all the heart disease and everything, it’s small because I always think that with aging, you’re treating the core or the roots. The causality part of the problem versus treating the DMI or cholesterol. You give the medication. That’s just treating the symptoms. You’re not treating from the core.
The field including the NIH, the founders, and things like that started to realize aging is a disease and should be treated as a disease. Once we do, we will be able to eliminate a lot of these issues from the beginning. That’s the future and I would love to drive our innovation team at GenoPalate to be a part of that.
We’re getting close to our time, but I do want to ask you one thing before we get into the last three questions that I ask all my guests. You talked a little bit about epigenetics and how that’s a contributing factor to a number of different things. Are there ways to reverse that? Is it like if I smoke a cigarette and my DNA is methylated, it’s not going to come back after that?
Stop doing those things. Maybe that’s the reason you use this as a great case. The epigenetic biological clock and algorithm is so sensitive that they can pick up literally when you smoke for a period of time in your childhood or teenage years or whatever. It’s there. To your point, there’s a permanent mark. However, it is a dynamic. Methylation, CpG identification, and modification is reversible. Not all but lots of them are.
For example, exercise before and after. I did an epigenomic food genome sequencing. The first paper is Food Genome Sequencing. It’s called EOS, epigenetic genome-wide screening for age-related and metabolism is coming from my lab. We’re talking about several thousands of important CpG islands across the genome will change even for 30 minutes of exercise time before or after. Some are transient, but we do think if it’s a lifestyle and habitual, it’s positive for your gene expression for your longevity. It will it will accumulate over time. I guess it’s a long-winded way to answer your question. It is reversible.
Other than smoking, what are some other epigenetic changes that maybe we’re not thinking about? For example, I love Diet Coke. I know that’s not good for me but it is something that I enjoy. They didn’t know about the effects of Diet Coke until lately. It’s specifically aspartame. There’s all of this talk about microplastics, artificial sweeteners, and fertilizer in our food. What are some things that maybe you might know as a molecular biologist that studies nutrition and genetics and epigenetics that maybe the layperson doesn’t know?
It terms of the additives?
Yes, things that might contribute to epigenetic changes that maybe you don’t even think about.
Bisphenol A or BPA. Our world is doing the right thing. Always look for non-BPA plastic. To be honest with you, just don’t use a plastic if you don’t have to. It’s good for the Earth too. You use your ceramics and try not to microwave because when you microwave, BPA-containing becomes carcinogenic, the food in the microwave. Don’t do that. BPA is a big one.
It is my interest too. The short story there is in mice, we’re talking about my epigenetic methylation of a short region that if it’s a highly methylated, it will lead to the same life of as a baby have that methylated for a different mechanism. They will become obese. They will die from cancer more easily. It will have diabetes and all sorts of issues if they’re heavily methylated. The piece of Bisphenol A will be able to make it worse. If you supply with folate which is vitamin B9, it will make it better.
Number one, you could treat the baby early enough to reverse that through demethylation mechanism. It’s the dynamics. More interestingly, if you feed the pregnant mom, we’re talking about my mice and animal study here but it’s very telling. You feed them with BPA to have the babies during pregnancy. That toxicity will lead to that bad scenario through methylation of one region of a methylation modification. You can reverse that in the pregnancy nutrition plan by supplementing more folate to correct that BPA’s bad effect. I hope it gives you a picture of how potent and interesting this mechanism work.
We’re getting close to the end of our time. I did want to ask you the three questions that I ask all of my guests. We talked a little bit about science fiction. What is something that you draw inspiration from whether it’s science fiction or literature or even something else in your life? For me, I am very inspired by utopian visions of the future from science fiction things like Star Trek or other sorts of visions of the future that are good for humanity. I look forward to that kind of stuff. Isaac Asimov, when there are robots that are helping us, I’m like, “I can’t wait until the day where a robot can fold my laundry,” or something like that. That’s going to be an exciting time to live as human being but what do you get inspiration from?
I’m not sure I have the definite answer, but what I would say is I learned a lot from philosophers in the past even thousand years back. I’m practicing food as medicine with science but for this medicine, it is probably one of the oldest statement about healthcare really and it’s so true. This is from Greek or Chinese. We all “figured out,” and there’s this beauty in hundreds or thousands smart hardworking intelligent people. They didn’t have the tool at a time, but they are so insightful.
We’re talking about futuristic like go to Mars. It’s the same thing. Many years ago, some of this beautiful minds already have that vision and maybe already practice with herbal medicine and things like that. We have this Chinese doctor wrote the first medicine book. You probably heard about him. He will go out to the mountain and hills and taste every single plants. Lots of time, he will be poisoned and a lot of time he will remedy himself.
He wrote this wonderful book. It’s the first pharmaceutical pocket handbook. There’s a lot of wisdom in there. Again, there no molecular biology at the time. There’s no sequencing but now we do. I don’t know if that makes sense. I pull a lot of wisdom from him. I see a lot of commonality. People are repeating our history. We humans. Repeating our history is not enough. That’s probably one inspiration I get.
Also, I talk to smart people, the people surrounding you. You are as smart as the average of the five people you talk the most. You’re so smart and I’m probably a little smarter now just by talking to you. You get a validation to all of that smart talk. We validate each other. We challenge each other. With all due respect to how everybody approach it, but the current opinions based on experience and a lot of vision is more powerful than watching some artists and they’re informed by us out of their futuristic stuff and they do their job. They get a lot of things from us. That’s how I get that.
You are as smart as the average of the five people you talk to the most.
I like the idea about ancient wisdom because I feel like a lot of change is happening right now. We are on an exponential growth curve with change in general as a society and not all change is a good change. We have to look back and see, “Where are we going as a species? Is this the right direction or the wrong direction?” Wisdom is important. I appreciate you saying that. A lot of the talks that we had talked about was in nutrition. It’s something that I’m trying to focus on right now. What are you doing in your own life based on everything that you’ve learned through your company as well as genetics as well as other things? How do you practice your own nutrition?
I practice a lot. I experiment a lot. I read. I’m drawn to innovation. I’m an adventurer. I’m a foodie too. Coming from our background, it’s very rich in cuisines. My grandma’s my inspiration about the full size. Everybody’s should always enjoy good food and nutrition. We will be healthier and happier. I believe in that. I try a lot of different things and changing too. I’ve been developing this new ritual. I will fast in the whole morning. I feel good. It’s for my mind. My mind is sharper when I don’t have anything in my body.
Everybody should always enjoy good food and nutrition, and you will be healthier and happier.
I only take liquid like green tea in the morning or maybe one cup of coffee. It depends on how functional I want to be for creativity. I eat in the afternoon because I’m pretty busy as you can imagine with everything going on. I am also a teenager mom. My son made to the varsity basketball so it’s going to be busier. With all these, it’s changing. Everybody’s like that. Our environment is changing.
We have to embrace it, number one. I think a lot of people are against them. Me too, sometimes but embrace it. That’s life. You only have one life. Embrace every single day. Start with a statement of, “This is going to be a great day.” I learned this from one of our best behavioral scientists, Dr. BJ Fogg of Stanford. It’s something you could develop a ritual with. I started to have the new ritual and I love it. My body loves it.
Listen to your body is another way. I used to calibrate. If I do this right, I do that wrong. I do not only follow other people’s advice because I always personalize it to me. What works for me and what I can stick to is the healthy one for me. That’s another one. Also, keep your curiosity for life or the crave for life going, you’ll be fine. That works for me. I know there are lot of people who are very rigid and it works. That’s fine. That’s good, too. I like regularity, but it’s not in my playbook.
I appreciate the intermittent fasting thing. I do the same thing. I don’t eat anything in the morning. I have two cups of coffee in the morning so I’m a little different. The amount of caffeine that I need to be functional. I have I have something in the afternoon as well in regards to the caffeine, but I don’t eat anything until probably about noon or so. I’ll have one other meal afterwards.
I don’t know if it’s necessarily good. I’m still experimenting myself. I was trying a meal plan service for a while just to cut out all the variables in regards to my macronutrients, but the next thing I’m going to do is I’m going to get this genetic test. I’m going to see if there’s anything that I could do differently so that I could lose those 5 to 10 pounds that we all need to lose. I appreciate that insight. The last thing is you’re a parent. I’m a parent. As you were saying, if you had a crystal ball what do you hope for your son that he will have available to him in the future or my daughter will have available to her in the future?
My son because of what I do, he’s an early adopter of genetics which is very fortunate. He has that in his bay. Not everybody has. I do hope your daughter and their generations will have access to that. I keep coming back to this. I want to see your daughter, my son, and other peers leave in the world that chronic disease is obsolete. It pains me to see such a reversible condition impact all of us in such a deep bad way. It breaks our banks and lower our life quality.
Treat yourself and treat Earth with respect and intelligence. Our next generation is very environment-conscious, which is great. I want through what we do help them to be equipped with all these tools and information. Also, the guidance, the beliefs, and the goals, prospects, and attitudes. Those are things it’s a hard to teach, but I want them to live a very healthy and productive live, and I think they can.
I can’t wait until we have robots. A robot for me, I’m going to be the first adopter, especially with somebody that can do household chores. That’s what I’m looking forward to. Anyway, Sherry, it was so nice to speak with you. Thank you so much for being on the show. For everybody who’s reading, please like and subscribe. For all of our regular readers, we will see you in the future. Have a great day, everyone.
Thank you.
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About Sherry Zhang
Dr. Yi Sherry Zhang is an obesity genomics researcher and a health tech entrepreneur with 17 years of experience helping individuals achieve optimal health and wellness with science. A specialist in digital health innovations, Sherry uses her experience to help people gain access to health equity. Sherry is a well-published author in the field of metabolic health and genomics and has been featured in several media publications.
Sherry is the founder of GenoPalate, a leading direct-to-consumer digital health tech provider of personalized nutrition. With her science team analyzing multiple millions of variables per person of GenoPalate’s large and growing client database, Sherry is addressing dietary chronic illness with preventative care of people at the personal level.
Sherry has received recognitions/awards including: 40 Under 40, Women of Influence, Who’s Who, and the Spirit of Marquette University Award. Sherry often speaks at industry think tank meetings including HLTH, Food as Medicine Summit, Personalized Nutrition Innovation and ANA’s Personalized Nutrition Summit.
Sherry plays piano, enjoys attending her son’s basketball games and is always looking for ways of eating delicious foods for healthy aging.
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