The Science of Metabolism with Dr. Paniz Jasbi | 015

Dr. Paniz Jasbi: We are no longer dying by animal attacks, or we're out of the cave. We are no longer dying by polio. We have vaccines for polio. We are dying from these heterogeneous disorders.

Dr. Fab Mancini: Hi. This is Dr Mancini, and I'm so excited that you're here today, because, as you know, my mission is to reverse chronic disease, and this is a mission that is not only mine, but a lot of the leaders of healthcare, not only in the United States, but around the world. Because just in the United States, chronic disease has become the number one expense of our healthcare system. And to me, I don't look at it only as an expense. I look at the suffering of our loved ones. Because any of us that have had any loved ones with heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, chronic pain, any of these chronic illnesses, we know the suffering that they undergo, and we know that their quality of life is not that great. But you know, my space over the last 38 years have been mostly in the natural health sciences. And for me, it's important that you as a listener, as a viewer, really understand that the Natural Health Sciences has a tremendous amount of science, and this is one area that a lot of times I've learned. I've learned that many times. We don't think that there's a lot of Sciences in something that doesn't have to do with a pharmaceutical or potentially a surgical procedure, but what I've learned in this space, since my space for so long, is that there's a tremendous amount of science, and today, I'm so excited to have one of the leading scientists in the world, Dr Panisse jasbi, PhD. He's a leading expert in metabola, metabolic mix and personalized healthcare. He has a background in biology and mass spectronomy at this Arizona State University. He's a co founder and chief science officer of Therion, and has helped develop very exciting tests, which we're going to talk a little bit about, because I just did my first one named Aristotle, and a key tool for advancing personalized care. Dr jasbi also served as the director of metabolics, the American Board of precision medicine, and has published extensively in top scientific journals. His work focuses in translating scientific discoveries into clinical applications to improve global health outcomes. I know that's a mouthful, but Panisse is so great to see you. Every time I see you, you always make me smile because you're such a nice man and so full of information. And I tell you every time I talk to you, I always feel like I just want to learn more, but welcome and thank you for making the time from your busy schedule to be with us.

Dr. Paniz Jasbi: Thank you Fab. So much for having me, and thank you for the very great introduction.

Dr. Fab Mancini: Very pleased to be here. Well, I want to start with the basics, you know. And that is your own evolution in this space. You know. What made you want to go into science, first and foremost? And why did you dedicate your life work into natural health sciences and being able to support the body's mechanisms, especially when it comes to metabolics?

Dr. Paniz Jasbi: Yeah. So I would, I would say that I started, I guess, into science, because the patient facing roles really didn't appeal to me. I had, you know, shadowed physicians as part of my undergraduate training, and I was pre med in the sense of taking a certain prescribed track of courses. And I enjoyed the thought of it, but I think being faced with the reality of practicing medicine bedside really wasn't for me. I think I really liked puzzles. I really liked solving things and building models of different scale, and this is the research really appealed to me, and I got into this space of, I guess, health testing really through realizing during my doctoral training and my post doctoral fellowships, my co founder and I, really, having gone through those periods of our life together, realized that we have a wealth of abilities in the universities and in These private research institutions and some of the best hospital systems in the world. And what do I mean by wealth of resources? I mean platforms like mass spectrometry or next generation sequencing that are able to do really impressive analytical feats like whole genome sequencing or large scale targeted metabolomics. These types of abilities, coupled with a sophisticated bioinformatics needed to process and deliver cogent information from data, because data is not knowledge right. Data has to go undergo some sort of transformation to become knowledge. But the idea that we have these platforms and these analytical methods that are showing. Uh, great performance and sensitivity and specificity and all the analytical characteristics of what we say, great test. They're showing these abilities, and we're not applying them clinically. So we have a wealth of knowledge, I think, in the science that we've already done. And my co founder and I are not so much in favor of, you know, what's going to move the needle the most is more research or more translation, we'd say we have enough research. We need to really focus on translation of these, of these studies into actionable next steps, and we can do that again through these, these platforms like mass spec next generation sequencing technology, as well as these bioinformatics that we have to make sense of this data and bring these tools to clinics that don't have access to them otherwise.

Dr. Fab Mancini: Well, you know, one of the things that I do appreciate as a healthcare provider is that you not only educate us as to the latest diagnostics tools out there to be able to serve our patients better, but you also educate our patients, and that's one of the things that I think is very critical in today's time, because even though the science have been around for a while, for a lot of people, maybe the first time they're hearing about it. So let's start with the first question that I'm very eager to hear you answer, and that is, we're talking about chronic disease. We know that the administration now is very much into reducing those numbers because of not only the healthcare cost aspect of it, but because of the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness of some of the current treatments that we're utilizing to tackle these diseases. Let's talk a little bit about metabolic processes and metabolism. You know, how do you explain what is metabolism and why do you feel that every single person needs to really pay attention and be able to understand where they stand in this incredible system that is so key to not only functioning well, but actually foundational for eradicating or reducing many of the diseases processes that we have out there.

Dr. Paniz Jasbi: Yeah. So great question, fat. So real quick, what is metabolism? It is the total set of biochemical reactions that takes place within your body, and those involve genes and proteins and transcripts and interactions with microbiota, and they all produce these things called metabolites, okay? And so you have two main sets of metabolism. You have anabolism, which is the processes that synthesize and create things. I mean, you have catabolism, which are the processes that degrade to that molecule. So you have catabolic and anabolic reactions, and those are all metabolic reactions. You have about 25,000 metabolites. Metabolites are the most sensitive and specific indicators of your current health state. You are not monitoring a sufficient number of them, right? And we can go into that another, at another time, but you need to monitor that. Why? Because metabolites are the reflection of metabolism. They are the most sensitive indicator of how that metabolism is functioning, and metabolism is the key to virtually all conditions that are the greatest contributors of human morbidity, mortality. We are no longer dying by animal attacks. We are we're out of the cave. We are no longer dying by polio. We have vaccines for polio. We are dying from these heterogeneous disorders. And by heterogeneous, I mean their etiologies with respect to their etiology. Their cause is a interaction between your genetic makeup and the environment, and that interaction is expressed as metabolites, right? The cause of most of these things that kill us and are the greatest threats to human life and longevity are what heart disease, neurodegenerative disorders, answers, right? And they're all metabolic disorders, right? And we know that the metabolic theory of cancer has, for the last, you know, 10 years, really, with withstood hypothesis testing. And I would say that it is the majority opinion that cancer is largely a metabolic disorder with, of course, one or two known kinds being viral, a neurodegeneration we know is tied to mitochondrial aberrations and shifts in substrate utilization or the fuel that the mitochondria are burning, going from glucose first, then to branch chain amino acids and then finally, to these fatty acids and beta oxidation. We know that heart disease is a metabolic disorder caused by a gag lifestyle. We have yet to find a reliable set of genetic markers that can accurately predict with 90% confidence or more if somebody is going to have heart disease from genetic markers, because it just doesn't work that way. We're all predisposed to some risk, but that risk is attenuated or accentuated with our lifestyle and our behaviors. So really, you have to test the metabolites because. Metabolites are the sensitive indicators. They are the product of that gene, environment interaction, or the genes you're made up with, you're created with, and then, of course, the lifestyle events that lead you to express those metabolites. That's where we should be looking, because they're all metabolic disorders. They're they have predispositions in the genome, but they are disorders of the metabolism. So that is the layer of systems biology you must be probing with our testing to to really identify and address this. And I would say to the administration that if you know the name of this podcast, is ending chronic disease, the best way to do that is to prevent the onset of chronic disease. Preventing the onset will inevitably end our disease in a generation or two

Dr. Fab Mancini: You know? And that's what I believe is very important, because my biggest concern that I have right now, and the reason that I jumped into this mission is because I started seeing the statistics on the number of children that are now exhibiting chronic disease, and I'm not talking only about obesity. Many times people focus on that number, and we have a tremendous amount of children that are overweight and obese, almost 50% in the United States alone, my concern is in their metabolic function, because that will lead them not only to obesity, but also to many of these other chronic diseases. So what do you think is the one thing that most people have not yet associated their symptoms or their conditions with metabolic function? Because, you know, most of us, even in school, I can tell you, in becoming a Doctor of Chiropractic and later on, many of my other advanced studies, metabolism was not something that we hit hard in our schools, and I know in a medical doctor's training. I'm very familiar with that because I was president of a university chiropractor, so I knew exactly what medicine was training their doctors to be. I knew what we were training our doctors to be. I knew the difference osteopath doctors, what they were training to become, where do you see has been perhaps a missing part of our educational process, not only to providers, but then to consumers, as to why metabolic function is critical to not only the way We feel, but the way we look, how we function, everything in our lives.

Dr. Paniz Jasbi: You know, I think this is, thankfully, an issue that is related to education, as you stated, and the kinds of education in this sort of thinking has begun in the medical schools, they are offering courses and systems biology and really showing to physicians that listen, you are essentially treating the expression of the central dogma of biology. The genes are expressed to transcripts. Transcripts are translated into proteins, and protein to direct with a bunch of things, including microbiota, and they produce metabolites. And so this central dogma is being taught, and there are other efforts. For instance, as you mentioned my introduction, I do serve as the director of metabolomics for the American Board of precision medicine, and I serve alongside really great scientists on that board, like Leroy hood. Professor hood is the father of personalized medicine, and he serves the director of systems biology, as well as my co founder, who's who's a fantastic rising star in the microbiome science space, if not a star already, and he serves as the Director of microbiomes. And our goal was to facilitate a formalization of precision medicine such that recognized by the AMA, such that physicians who want to become specialized and certified in precision medicine, board certified, they would come to us. And so right now, we're drafting the curriculum and presenting the board questions to the AMA shortly to begin the process of becoming the recognized certification board for precision medicine. That's where it starts. Is the education that is something that I think we're stemming at the root, really, this misconception and deep appreciation has to be taught. Obviously, this is a specialty board. But, you know, even in routine medical schools, medical doctors currently get two weeks of training and nutrition. Some medical schools is one week, and they need to have an extended period where they engage with rds. And RDS are really, really great at this. Can be, sometimes you can have some disagreements in the science, but can be really great at this and showing the physicians, reminding them that, like, food is medicine, right? What you eat will either hasten or delay the onset of disease. And so food is, in many ways, if you can now learns medicine and are there, and one of the primary lines of defense we have against modern day things. And then I would say, so we're contributing to the education. We're contributing to the formalization of these processes. But in addition to that, I think an important thing that people don't for instance, you mentioned, what do they not attribute to metabolism? I would say people tend to not attribute cognitive i. Issues to metabolism, and, I mean, like mood, you know, issues like, let's say, you know, you are having anxiety, right? And you know, well, what are your caffeine levels? What are your histamine levels? How's your serotonin these are, these are those questions that we answer, right? You're having, you know, schizophrenia has a metabolomic signature. You can do a metabolite test. For many researchers published reliable and highly accurate panels, metabolite panels for testing schizophrenia. You know, we regularly in our physician order testing service. We regularly observe people who have brain fog, and it's related to a mitochondrial thing, but a specific signature of, you know, neuronal mitochondria, which we can address with certain interventions. And so, so that's something that I think people don't, don't really appreciate, is that these cognitive and mood based issues that we experience are themselves, the products of metabolism. And again, it's coming. I think the full, more full appreciation of metabolism is, is on the horizon.

Dr. Fab Mancini: Well, you know, one of the things that I recognize, especially people that may be watching this, is you've looked at the science of metabolic function, right? You looked at all the research that is out there. You have done some amazing research, which I saw on your website. You have so many amazing papers they publish in some of the leading scientific journals in the world, but at the same time, you spend a lot of time, energy and money developing, you know, the type of diagnostic testing that can be extremely comprehensive, probably the most comprehensive I've ever seen in my Life, in 38 years, dealing with this one subject, right? The biggest problem that I've always had with our traditional healthcare system is that our main diagnosis testing is blood work and urine, and many times from those two entities, we look at some things, but we don't look at metabolic function hardly ever. We may look at numbers that are very clear with whether it's our immunity, with our white blood cells and red blood cell counts, and we may look at, you know, our cholesterol and triglycerides and but at the same time, when I went through this test, I felt that it was so comprehensive, far more than I could have ever imagined. And I believe that in order to be effective as a as a doctor, but also as a patient, the more specific the information is, the better decisions that I can make accordingly. Now we mentioned epigenetics and we measured lifestyle. We know that's playing a major role in the Chronic Disease world, but what were you trying to accomplish by developing such an accomplished test that now doctors can recommend to their patients? Patients can actually do this at home, which is very practical to do. What were you trying to accomplish with that in order to really make the type of difference that you wanted to make in this space?

Dr. Paniz Jasbi: Yeah, so there's three parts to the testing model. I think you just touched on all three. There is a logistical aspect how we get the sample, there is the analytical aspect, which is, what does it mean? And then there is the perspective aspect, which is, what do you now do about it? Right? And so what we wanted to do was have a test that is capable of being sampled at home. In fact, all of our tests, you've completed our metabolomic test known as the Aristotle test, but we have the Ilia test as well, and it's a gut microbiome test and a stool test, but they're all collected at home, and any future tests that we have in development currently have three other tests in development. These will all be remote patient monitoring enabled, because that is the future of medicine. It is actually sampled at home. And so we can get into why that's the case later, but that's that's what we wanted to do. So you'll notice the kit, at least, you know, a serious kit. It shows up lots of directions where to register, video instructions for how to sample if needed, text based, graphic based instructions. Everything is sturdy as it should be. And of course, we are, an FDA registered and cleared testing kit. And so then we go to, what do we do when a sample comes to our lab here in downtown Phoenix, we know that disease hardly ever happens in a single metabolite level. It is very rare that, you know, with onset of, you know, cardiovascular thrombosis and coagulation processes and fibrosis, we would see just elevated palmitic acid, which is a fatty acid that we need for nutritional adequacy, but I amounts, has deleterious effects on everything from lipid metabolism to, you know, sebaceous gland function of the skin. But palmitic acid, let's say more like. Actually, it is a function of pathways related to fatty acids. So the cardiovascular events that we see underlying heart disease are related to, let's say, elevated palmitic acid, lowered levels of Stearic and oleic acid, which are good fats, right? And so this profile, you know, very high levels of bad fat, low levels of good fats. This profile is pathogenic, and it does suggest a few things depending on how high or low each of those metabolites are, according to previous literature. So what we know is that we have to monitor the pathway. At the beginning of my talk, I mentioned to you that listen, there are 25,000 metabolites that are cleaning your body that we have indexed as part of the human metabolism database that researchers have really indexed. But what? What does that mean? If met, if disease doesn't happen at the metabolite level, disease happens at the pathway level, then it doesn't matter how many metabolites you monitor or how many pathways you monitor. And the answer is, of course, the latter. So these 126 metabolites that we monitor when we map them to the 80 known human pathways. There are 80 pathways that another database known as keg, and of those 80 pathways we can monitor 68% of those pathways with two metabolites or more. So we have created a very chemically amicable chromatography and mass spec method that enables us to analyze these somewhat chemically diverse, but very much similar as well. They're all activist metabolites, but they have some chemical diversification as well. We can analyze these sub chemical classes that are relatively diverse, 14 different sub chemical classes with this chromatography and mass spec method, and when we map those metabolites to pathways. Again, we're seeing coverage of 68% of all known human metabolic pathways. Which two metabolites are more? Is there room for improvement? Yes, and we are actively, obviously, we're leading the field in this with respect to coverage, but we're still making efforts to push that as high as 88% right then, when that 68% was two fat with so we're monitoring a comprehensive swath of of pathways, which is where disease happens. So that's what we want to do. Compare that to something like a CDC, monitoring 3% right? You're looking at a CNP. You're adding another three or 4% you have to stack CNP, CBC, liver, thyroid and oat test together to get roughly 19% of human metabolism covered with the same criteria, two metabolites or more. So we are looking at a very large swath of metabolites it is, is a stack of other tests and then some. And then what do we do about it? Well, what we do about it, the perspective stage is this analytical method that was really borrowed from the advanced engineering and aeronautics industry, which is, you know, some scientists at NASA, about four scientists in the late 90s, Woodrow method control 20. And this is where they are building a spacecraft. And instead of building and fabricating and assembling, you know, each part of that spacecraft in real life and then testing it in real life scenarios that you can imagine a time and cost of doing that, what their idea was? What have we drafting these parts in silico, assembled it in silico, and tested it in silico, estimating, you know, simulating the natural forces it would face in real life. And now, now health science researchers, you know, before even my time, had brought in digital twinning into the framework of bioscience, basically building biological models of organs of metabolism, of genomes, and then simulating various things on them in silico, and then sort of imagining once the effects would be illegal. And so it provides, really a basis of experimentation. What we did with you fab was we took all of your 126 metabolites, covering 68% of of known human involved pathways, and that lets us profile 900 times. That lets us profile almost 4600 different SNPs, with regard to their metabolite Association, that lets us profile 480 different disease signatures, that lets us profile various aspects of health, and we create a model based on your metabolism, and on that metabolism, we take our database of interventions, and that database contains 1300 plus different interventions, and intervention can be everything from what we invest walk for bone health, it can be a medication for neurocognitive health. It can be let the Somalia sign on for inflammation. What we do is we take each intervention and we simulate it 1000 times. On your digital twig, your data replica, and we simulate it 1000 times. Because with each iteration of that 1000 we change things around. If we're giving you red light therapy, one iteration will be 616, Atom years. The next it'll be 850, the next it'll be combination. One will be at your thyroid, one will be directed at your lower sternum, right? And this is how we essentially we personalize it, because with every iteration we view the response from a digital twin, then we're able to tailor each intervention to a specific dose, frequency, duration. It's all based on 15 statistics that we have to mine for every single intervention from the scientific literature. But it is also, I think, a very sincere effort to match you with what is going to work for you, what is scientifically predicted out of 1.3 million simulations to work best for you and you you read your protocol. It's highly detailed. It is incredibly specific. It leaves little to no room for doubt. And I think in the really important aspect of our company is that we're not selling this supposed solution, right? We're not selling the supplement, we're not selling the health code, we're not selling anything. We are a data capture and analysis company that's our cell and our goal is to allow you to utilize these platforms, both analytical and statistical, that you wouldn't have access to otherwise, and make sense of data that without comprehensive AI solutions that we offer, like digital twinning, would not be able to make sense of and determine clear, actionable protocol for Your patients.

Dr. Fab Mancini: Well, you know, it's interesting, because for me, I've done so much testing over the years, but I've learned more about not only my overall health, but also about the metabolic function of my body through this test and anything is I've done in the past. But it didn't stop there. It was an awareness, which is important for me as a patient, but also for me as a provider, guiding my patients into how to better support their health. But then you went a step further. You started giving me those recommendations that you measure, that you mentioned, that are based on data that is very credible over the years, not necessarily dictating do this one or that one, or this company or that company, but more importantly, these are things that have been shown to be able to support that. And what I love about it is that now that I have a blueprint, right, I have a road map is specifically designed for me, which is what I love about precision medicine is a very personalized medicine. It's a very personalized health care. It means that this is actually not something that is recommended to everybody out there with similar symptoms. This is actually for you, and you only based on all the results of this diagnosis testing. But then I really like the idea that now I can have a plan that can guide me to make decisions and then retest myself to see okay based on the decisions that I've made. Because I may be one of those individuals that said I'm going to do everything right, or I may be an individual that says I'm going to incorporate maybe three or five things out of the report, whatever the case may be, you will get the opportunity to be able to test again and compare how you're doing along the way. Because the key thing, in my opinion, that I learned about science is the idea that what may sign something scientific is the ability to measure it, and I want to make sure that there's a lot of discussion out there. I feel better, you know, or I don't have no longer this symptom that, to me, has never been good enough. What is good enough for me is not only to validate it through some functional testing, which is so I'm so happy that so many medical doctors have become functional medicine persons and specialists, and so many traditional providers that never were taught this world are so excited. They're like little kids so excited to play in this field, because they're seeing real change, where maybe the things that they did before were not creating the level of impact that they wanted to have in that particular discipline. So now I have a comprehensive opportunity to implement what I've learned, not just know about it, but also do something about it and then measure it to see what impact did it have in my body over this period of time. And then once I do the retesting, guess what happens? We test that again, and you get another set of recommendations based upon where you are at that time in life. Because true health is not about a rival. It's about the journey. And to me, I've always mentioned, focus on the journey. Don't be so concerned on the outcome if you make the right choices today, the outcome typically tends to be there has been my experience, but also measure it along the way to ensure that you're making good choices that are having the level of impact that you want to have, instead of people that tell me, Oh, I'm taking 40 supplements a day. Well, how do you feel in the last year? Have you seen a change? No, I'm pretty much the same. That doesn't make sense to me, but that seems to be the insanity for a lot of people out there. They just get caught up into doing, but never really measuring. So that's one of the things. But instead, i i. Appreciated about the more I get to know you. Your track record is the fact that you always supported the science behind all of the work that you've been introducing through the scientific journals, but also the education to providers like me and the education to consumers, not only through your lectures, but also through your reports, because the patients will actually get a real understanding of what they can do, not only what they have, but what the test shows, but also what they can do along the way. So with your permission, I'm going to put the links right here so people can actually go and learn more about this testing. I'm encouraging you that is listening consider doing it. I mean, I can tell you that as soon as I saw all the things that I was going to measure, I just had to do it immediately. He can tell you he had to come the next morning, early morning before we left the hotel, in order to do my exam there. Because I just didn't even want to wait till I got home, got my test and do it at home. So I want you to know that we need to really pay attention to your metabolic function. I believe this particular topic in healthcare is going to take a tremendous leap over the next five to 10 years, because it's one thing that Dr jasbi mentioned. It is the common denominator for most of the conditions that we're facing out there, but it's the one thing that has never been a priority in the method of treatment, in my opinion, and that's what's changing. So if you really want to make a difference in the way you feel, if you want to really tackle this from a scientific perspective, then please reach out to Dr Javid, and he'll be more than happy to help you answer any of those questions, and more importantly, be able to show you, through testing, exactly where you stand at this stage in your life. Any last minute parting words, no.

Dr. Paniz Jasbi: Thank you so much for having me fab again. I think the insights we raised in our discussion was fantastic. And if viewers have any questions, I'll make sure to give you the info link to our theory on communication. They can email us any any follow up questions.

Dr. Fab Mancini: Well, thank you so much. And everybody out there, thank you for listening, and I look forward to the next one. See you soon.