In this insightful episode of Conners Clinic Live, Dr. Kevin Conners is joined by Kashif Khan to discuss the intricate interplay between genetic predispositions and environmental factors in the development of chronic illnesses. Kashif shares his personal health journey, shedding light on the often-overlooked environmental toxins that impact our health and how understanding our genetic makeup can guide us to better health outcomes. Tune in to learn practical tips and strategies for managing your health in today’s challenging environment.
Tune in to learn:
- Kashif Khan’s personal journey from suffering multiple chronic conditions to achieving health
- The role of genetics in chronic illnesses
- The impact of environmental toxins on our health
- The difference between genetic and functional genomics
- Practical steps for mitigating environmental risks
- The importance of personal responsibility in maintaining health
- Insights into the homesteading movement and its relevance to holistic health
- The significance of gut health and its connection to overall well-being
- How to identify and prioritize health risks based on genetic testing
- The effects of lifestyle choices on chronic disease prevention and management
About Kashif Khan – CEO & Founder of The DNA Company
Kashif Khan is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of The DNA Company, where he is leading the way in personalized medicine by unlocking unique insights into the human genome.
Growing up in Vancouver, Canada, in an immigrant household, Kashif developed a strong entrepreneurial spirit early on. Before founding The DNA Company, he advised numerous high-growth start-ups across various industries.
As he delved into functional genomics, Kashif discovered that his genetic makeup was inherently suited for entrepreneurship. However, he also found that his genes made him particularly sensitive to pollutants.
This new perspective on his health inspired Kashif to further explore the genetic pathways behind his family’s health challenges and identify opportunities to reverse chronic diseases. For Kashif, success is measured not by financial gain but by the number of lives improved. Passionate about science outreach, he shares his knowledge on functional genomics through his podcast, The Unpilled Podcast/The DNA Talks Podcast, and his active social media presence.
Listen to or Watch the Full Podcast Episode
Transcript
Dr. Kevin Conners
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Conners Clinic Live. I’m Dr. Kevin Conners, and we have an interview with Kashif Khan. Kashif, you interviewed me in a summit a number of years ago, and we haven’t really spoken much since then, and I feel really bad. Finally, Dustin said: you haven’t talked to him for a long time and we need to get him on a podcast, as we promised to do that. I see your Instagram videos. You’re all over Instagram, so I follow you on that. I’m not really on YouTube, but I follow you on Instagram. I think you’re probably on Facebook, too, you have a good presence, and you do a lot of really good education. So I’m going to let you talk, but I just want to make one comment real quick.
Kashif Khan
Sure.
Dr. Kevin Conners
I get emails or messages from people, or videos sent from people and even my staff about other “natural doctors” or “natural practitioners”. I don’t know if they’re all doctors, making comments and making these little videos that, so many of them I disagree with. It’s like, what? That is totally untrue. That’s totally wrong information, and it gives natural doctors a bad name when they make these ridiculous claims. I never see that from you. So I have to tell you, right off the bat that I respect you for that. You’re not saying, hey, put this mineral oil and put it in your body and it solves all these problems, or some stupid thing like that. So thank you for that. Now let’s jump in to talk to you and tell me what you’ve been digging into lately.
Kashif Khan
Yeah, thank you for saying that. You know, it speaks to what we do. Where is this all coming from? So I’m online telling the world all this bad news about what makes you sick and to some degree, also how to solve it. This comes from a space – I’m not a clinician, not a scientist, no formal training. I was sick. Five chronic conditions. I had eczema to the point where I couldn’t open my left eye. It was like, literally sealed shut. I had psoriasis, like, literally, my knuckles would be bleeding from the cracks and the open wounds, and migraines, gut issues, depression. Actually, there was a 6th one. There was also a reflux issue. My gut was just totally disrupted. So, anyways, in that journey, I’m in Canada. I’m in Toronto. So we have a government healthcare system. Everything is free, but it’s all disease centric and symptom centric. So the measure of success was that I was taking five different pills from five different doctors, maintaining and managing what I had, and I had never been sick prior to that. Like never. I didn’t expect it, I didn’t know what this was all about.
So I asked the question, what did I do wrong? Why? Why all of a sudden? Five, six, multiple problems. I must have eaten something, I must have done something. Just logic kicked in, right? And the answer, if I were to paraphrase, it’s like, we don’t do that here. You know, diagnose, prescribe, here’s what it’s called, here’s the pill, we’ve solved the problem. So that put me into this sort of rabbit hole journey of trying to understand how the body works, which I never understood prior to. I started to understand biology, I started to dive deep into genetics and I understood that even that was broken. There was a very disease, disease centric view of genetics, and it needed to be more functional, so I made it more functional, and I slowly healed myself. Then I slowly got my arthritic mother out of bed, and my anxiety induced niece back to school, and so on and so on and so on. And the research continued.Now, fast forward several years, I built a business around it where we supply functional testing to clinics. I learned so much about what’s truly driving health outcomes, good and bad.
That’s what I speak about online now. For me, it’s like, if you watch my videos, I’m not selling anything. I just really feel like the world needs to know this information because these little nuanced, what’s in your kitchen, what’s in your clothing, you know, what do you breathe, what do you eat? All the epigenetic inputs are the choice between chronic disease or not. As complex as it is, it’s a simple thing to deal with.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Well, and I want to touch on, I think, a major point that you just said, you said you healed yourself and you had to learn information. And I think there’s a lot of people that are that boat, they’re learning that they have to take responsibility for their own health, but it’s still a “little boat” compared to everybody else that’s in the “cruise ships” following the practice of medicine. I don’t see the medical doctors getting any less busy. I don’t see the hospitals emptying out. To me, that’s a very sad thing. But it’s also tells you how important marketing is as far as, pharmaceutical companies own everything on the television, pharmaceutical companies own the doctors. You go to a doctor and they’re just paid pharmaceutical reps. That’s all they are, to dish out these drugs. And like you said, we don’t do that here. We don’t even know what you’re talking about.
Kashif Khan
The United States is one of two countries in the world where pharmaceutical companies are allowed to advertise. It’s the US and it’s New Zealand. And New Zealand, it was only because there was some drug that they needed seniors to be aware of. If you look at the budget, it’s like a few million dollars versus the tens of billions that is spent on marketing every year in the United States. Even in the United States, that was the original intention, is that there needs to be awareness around novel, you know, new drugs that can benefit a certain population, that may not know that it’s possible. But it turned into a consumer marketing machine of like, I don’t even have a problem, but this sounds good. You know, that’s kind of where we’re at now. So there’s this belief, like you said, I can do whatever I want, eat what I want, breathe what I want, stress levels, sleep levels, whatever, and it’s the doctor’s job to fix me when I break something. That’s the belief.
We’ve completely lost what health is. The other thing that we’ve lost around health, because we believe that when something’s broken, you fix it, and it’s like a stamp in time, where from sick to not sick, etcetera, vs. health is something you maintain.
Even myself, I know that two, three weeks, as far as I’ve gotten concerning myself in biohacking territory now, gone far beyond cured, far beyond optimization, far beyond what supplements do I take. Like, I truly think of myself as a biohacker. I’m now into the anti aging world, right? Even then, I know if I spend two, three weeks doing the wrong thing, I’m going to get sick again.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Yeah.
Kashif Khan
So it’s knowing that this is a maintenance program. It’s not a band-aid by any means.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Well, especially when we’re getting inundated with so many poisons on a daily basis, even when you’re trying to eat organic and do the right things, you know, you cleaned up your house, you got rid of toxins in your household, and it’s just an endless fight. I mean, we are being sprayed with stuff in the air… you can’t get away from this stuff. Chemicals are just being created in laboratories on a weekly basis, seeing how we can make money and use these to “better the population”, but it’s actually poisoning us.
Kashif Khan
You have 144,000 chemicals added to humanity since the 1970s. Our ancestors had zero exposure to this stuff. Even people with the best genetics can’t cope with it today because their best genetics were based on an assumption that we’re cave people walking out into beautiful nature and killing a buffalo and plucking a plant off the ground, and the best defenses are for that context. You have all these chemicals. You have an average woman is putting 500 chemicals a day on her body. Between her shampoo and her cosmetics and her fragrances, you have four and a half pounds of chemicals flowing through a female body on an annual basis. You probably saw this study that came out a couple months ago about the average American consumes a credit card worth of plastic on a weekly basis. We are inundated constantly. So the reality of how we think about our health, it’s no longer things are good, and until something’s broken, health is not something I think about. Things are not good. You step out of your home, even in your home, you probably have mold, the air quality, etc. So you have to proactively be working on this because there’s too much exposure today.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Right. There are over 1300 chemicals in skincare and cosmetic things, in the US that are banned in Europe. You can’t buy a new couch, and not have it sprayed with, you know, 14 different flame retardant chemicals that are going to leach right into the air space and onto your skin and be absorbed through your skin. Those are highly toxic things.
Kashif Khan
Yep.
Dr. Kevin Conners
We go on and on and on. I just saw a whole article about bamboo clothing, thinking that that’s so good for you. But the amount of toxins that they use in creating, you know, from a bamboo plant, to create it into a clothing product, it can be more toxic than anything. I mean, things you think you’re doing that are healthy, you find out they’re not healthy at all. So it’s like you’ve got to stay up on information. As painful as it is, you’ve got to be listening to people that are telling you the truth because you’re not going to get it from the companies.
Kashif Khan
Yeah, it’s funny you mentioned that bamboo thing, because I literally shot a video about that this morning.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Did you really?
Kashif Khan
Yeah. I think I may have seen the same article as you. It’s going to come out in the next few days. But yeah, there’s these solvents that are being used to take – Bamboo is a rough fiber. It’s not, you know, soft, malleable clothing like fiber. So to get it into that form takes a lot of processing. This is where you’re also finding clothing chock full of forever chemicals, your PFAS chemicals. It’s kind of like the war story. How is it even possible, like, in these activewear pants that women are wearing so much of? You’re very specifically finding the forever chemicals in the crotch lining, which is .. to have this cavity with this highly absorbent skin, which is the worst place you could find it, right? And for clothing that you wear while you’re, like, sweating it at the gym?! You wonder, like, what’s going on with all the cervical cancer and ovarian cancer? Yeah, you have constant exposure to forever chemicals.
It’s just getting back to basics. The conveniences that we’ve bought into, I understand the value of that. We got to drop them and realize wool, linen, you know, natural fibers, and if you want to get into the woo-woo territory, it’s even the frequency of those fibers. We know that we are frequencies, and the wool, linen, these cottons, their particles live at a certain frequency, which is beneficial, versus plastics, etc., that were not meant to be in our body.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Yeah, exactly. It gets overwhelming for people. I do get that. You made a comment that it’s really getting back to the basics. I’m excited to see the homesteading movement going on, where a lot of people are trying to get back to some basic things. But, I mean, you don’t have to go to the point where you’re going to live off grid and, you know, grow everything yourself. I mean, getting back to basics just starts with some baby steps.
Kashif Khan
Yep. I guess from my perspective, we take a genetic view, which is, there’s so much overwhelm – the word you use. That’s the truth – overwhelm. So if you can prioritize and know what to actually focus on and at least do that, right? So take me as an example. There’s a gene called GSTM1, which is a primary driver of glutathione activity in your gut. So your first line of defense, to remove the toxins that come along with the food, the plastics, the packaging, everything that you don’t want entering your bloodstream, that may lead to gut dysbiosis, leaky gut, etc. I don’t have that gene. So it’s not even about what version, what variant. There’s something called a copy number variation, which tells you not a SNP or a spelling error within the gene, but do you even have the gene or do you have extra copies of that gene? Unique variant that only happens in certain genes. So I have this copy number variation zero. So for me, the source of my inflammatory issues was my gut, even though I was eating the same “clean” food as my business partner. The subtle nuances of the packaging and, you know, the drying chemicals that are used to dry chickpeas to make hummus. I thought I was eating healthy food. I was eating hummus, but it’s actually dried with chemicals to make it, the yield, turn around faster. So things like that I need to learn. That was my big priority. I actually do really well with inhalation airborne-based toxins. You know, when I was young, I ran a landscaping business when I was in school and I was fine, you know, vs. a couple of my friends that I hired to work with me that used to get headaches and not feel so good, because I actually do really well with it – not saying that I should be exposed, but I do well with it.
Dr. Kevin Conners
From that standpoint, you make enough glutathione in your lungs but not in your gut…
Kashif Khan
Exactly. So now I know what to focus on and prioritize, and that really helps with the overwhelm. You know, here’s my big – my leaky hole in my boat where the water’s coming in from. Let me plug that first.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Yeah. So that makes an easy segue of getting into what you do and your whole genetic profiles that you look at. We do the same thing with our cancer patients. Genetics are important. I’m not saying genetics cause cancer, but genetics give you clues of why you couldn’t get rid of those toxins or why different detox pathways that have issues, why your liver isn’t functioning the way it should. So, yeah, we need to get rid of exposure, but you can start with where you’re going to be primarily absorbing it or not being able to get rid of it.
Kashif Khan
Yeah, because that action plan is going to be comprehensive and overwhelming. So what’s the lowest hanging fruit for you? Right? For some women, it’s internal. It’s not even an external source. It’s not even like, hey, I need to cut things out. Yes, you do need to cut things out. But the primary concern may be the hormones that you make. Some women — and you mentioned genetics and cancer, and a lot of people, the first place they go is BRCA gene and APOE and dementia genes. I know that you have this functional thinking, so you go far beyond that. But I was just literally, prior to this call that we’re having right now, I was on another call with a lady who was told that she has a certain version of the BRCA gene, and she called me to ask if she should get a mastectomy, and I think a removal of her fallopian tubes.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Oh brother.
Kashif Khan
So she’s heard the decision was, do I go chop a bunch of my body parts out? My answer was, well, there’s also a risk of liver cancer and brain cancer. You should cut those out, too, right? What do you mean?
Dr. Kevin Conners
But that’s the absurdity of it. I mean, yeah, she’s asking that question because probably her oncologist has put her up to it. It’s absolutely absurd.
Kashif Khan
Yeah, exactly. It’s absurd. So here’s, here’s this risk. So I asked her, did the oncologist that told you – that’s exactly what happened – you know, that you have this BRCA gene, go cut your breasts off. Did they tell you what the BRCA gene does? She said no. So how do you know it causes cancer? She said, well, it’s a risk factor. I said a risk for what? What does it do? So we talked about it, and this is the difference between genetics and functional genomics. Genetics is you have the BRCA gene, go cut your breasts off vs. functional genomics. The BRCA gene is a tumor suppressor, fights cancer. It also repairs DNA damage and oxidation and a lot of other things that are going wrong. If you have not the BRCA gene, but a certain version, a variant, you don’t do such a good job of repair. So God forbid you get cancer. You’re not likely to fight it that well. You need additional support. So why did you get – we still haven’t even looked at: Why did it happen?
So the thing that I was saying about hormones, some women are more estrogen dominant, and we can determine this genetically. You can also determine it through DUTCH testing and other methods. They make more estrogen than they need. They’re estrogen dominant. They also, step 2 of 3, the metabolite that they convert it into. So when you have your monthly cycle, you make your hormones and then you convert them into two hydroxy estrogen, four hydroxy estrogen, 16 hydroxy estrogen. Two is good, clean stuff, until you’re menopausal, and it also becomes problematic at that time. Four and 16 are DNA damaging, like from birth, at an early age, it continues and continues. That’s the thing that if you make too much of it, it may be the source of damaging cells to the point where something problematic like cancer could happen. But then why not every woman, if it’s so deterministic? Well, then there’s a third layer. What are the detox pathways that eliminate that metabolite? There’s your same glutathione pathways we talked about. There’s your anti-oxidative pathway, so mitochondrial function, there’s your COMPT, which is a protein that removes and eliminates things. How well is that working? You can start to see the puzzle in this full picture of, estrogen dominant, estrogen, toxic, bad detox. I’m having a monthly cycle of an inflammatory insult, and on top of that, I’m using a teflon coated frying pan, and I’m on the birth control pill, and I’m wearing yoga pants with forever chemicals.
The epigenetic load on top of that genetic profile is equally a combination of too much total load. Now fast forward to menopause. No more menstrual cycle, no more clearance and removal, and your body is trying to protect you. It’s like, well, where do I put all this toxic nonsense that I make? I’m going to go store it in fat. I’m going to protect the organs. And of course, women have fat in the breast. Then you get this phenomenon of two years into menopause, women on BHRT get breast cancer. I’m not saying BHRT is bad. I think it’s great. I just think you have to be personalized. That’s the point where now you’ve got to think about: what version of BRCA do I have? You could have tested a five year old girl and told her this story. Yeah, and many other stories. It’s not just this one, right?
Dr. Kevin Conners
Right. It’s definitely more about prevention. And you talk about cancer, it’s never, you know, hormonal, even a hormonal cause. People think their ER positive or PR positive cancer is caused by the hormone. No, the hormone – even that 4 hydroxy is just blocking the estrogen beta receptors. It’s not the cause of the cancer. Something had to get inside the cell to damage the DNA. Most likely, you know, the forever chemicals or the toxins that you’re exposed to. So looking at the big picture, taking the baby steps and trying to clean up that person’s environment and getting some proper testing done. You mentioned getting hormone testing done. It’s just crazy how many breast cancer patients that we have where their oncologists never tested their hormones, but they’re going to add aromatase inhibitors for the next ten years. To never test the person’s hormones?? Never, ever have I had a breast cancer patient where the oncologist even did a simple estrogen blood test, let alone doing a full DUTCH test. It’s just sad. Which tells you that, you know, they’re all just pharmaceutical shills that are just kicking out revenue to follow a pattern that is listed in the Merck manual that is written by the pharmaceutical industry. It’s sad. You’ve got to take responsibility.
Kashif Khan
Yeah, well, when you have a $4 trillion healthcare system, of which 90% – that’s the actual number, 90% – is spent on chronic disease, there are certain people that don’t want that to go away. That’s $3.6 trillion every year.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Right, right.
Kashif Khan
And at the top, you have a $4 trillion food industry that’s owned by the same people, you know, and then you have a multi trillion dollar chemical industry. There’s a challenge for all of us, which is the economics of it all makes it very difficult for everything that we’re saying to be real. You have to go back to the very first thing you said. You have to manage it yourself.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Yep. Taking that personal responsibility is so, so important.
Kashif Khan
Yeah.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Well, what are some last words of wisdom that you want to share with our listeners?
Kashif Khan
Well, I mean, for what I’ve learned from the point that I was sick to the point where I’m at now, I went to this complete evolution of my thinking of victim, disease happened to me. Why? Why me? To learning that I caused it and I don’t need to have it. I’m sitting here in front of you without any of those things, and I truly had them all. They were part of my life. So chronic disease is a choice. You know, the way you age is a choice. Your energy, your libido, your hair, your skin, all of those considerations that we’re all treating topically, it’s all a choice.
There’s a lady who’s a major influencer, who’s a private client of mine that’s sort of on like a retainer. I maintain her health. The other day, she put out a video with no makeup for the first time. I told her, I think you have – you need some kidney support. She’s like, what are you talking about? She just had these dark circles in her eyes. I’ve just never seen her without makeup. I think I also said, you also need some liver support.. you’re yellow. She said, I went to the doctor and I’m not sick. I said, that’s the whole point. You WILL be.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Right.
Kashif Khan
Understanding that the ancient wisdom we had, which we’re now thinking is alternative medicine, was medicine. What we now have is alternative. It’s a different way to deal with the body, which is: cause the illness and then mask it and manage it, and actually maintain it to make sure the person stays in a disease state so that it’s eternal. Not only that, but let’s turn this one disease into three diseases. That’s the line extension, product extension, per person, vs. we did have a healthcare system where chronic disease wasn’t a big deal. Yes, there were viruses and war and injuries and acute problems, but chronic disease wasn’t prevalent. It now is. We now have the wealthiest empire that’s ever existed, that’s also the most sick.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Yeah.
Kashif Khan
It’s unbelievable. The basis of our, our health is an economic question, not a health question. So it’s a choice. You have to know what to prioritize, which means testing, whatever you’re using, do something to know what’s going on in the inside. Understand what the cues mean. Your skin, your tongue, your eyes, your energy levels, your mind, and your gut.
The last thing. Sorry, you asked me for one word of wisdom. I had many. But there’s one last thing I would say, is that having dealt with so many people that are kind of stuck, I haven’t met anybody that is stuck that doesn’t both have a gut issue and also is stuck in somewhat of a fight or flight state where their mind is preventing them from healing. So understanding your executive function and how you’re wired and why the same exact exposure for you is anxiety and stress vs. somebody else where it’s not, and the body doesn’t heal in a fight or flight. It’s just very binary, you’re either recovering or you’re fighting. If you’re stuck there, which it’s so easy to be because today there’s so much stimulus to cause you to be stuck there, it’s very tough to heal. So fix the mind, calm down, fix the gut. Now let’s start dealing with everything else and get yourself to a level where you can then maintain, and then maintenance is your job. There’s no doctors that will do that. That’s your job. So that’s kind of how I think people should address their bodies.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Well, I agree. Choice and responsibility. Choice, responsibility. Right?
Kashif Khan
Yes.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Well, thanks for being on. Let’s not make it as long as we did last time. I’ll have you on again in the next few months.
Kashif Khan
Sure. It was a pleasure. It was good talking to you. I’ve been thinking about you, too, because there’s many people I talk to that are stuck in these cancer journeys. I always remember the reverse. The interview I did of you and all the things that you said, which I repeat over and over again.
Dr. Kevin Conners
Well, thank you. All right, we’ll talk again soon.
Kashif Khan
All right, great. Thank you.
Dr. Kevin Conners
All right, bye.
View all episodes on the Conners Clinic Live page!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
NOTE: All of the above statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This and any product(s) discussed are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Dustin has been passionate about holistic health since he met his wife, Dr Mallory Ranem (Conners) 20 years ago. As the Digital Media Manager, he coordinates content across Conners Clinic’s large online presence, including written, video, and audio.
In this Brand New 3rd Edition Dr. Kevin Conners adds almost DOUBLE the content with all new insights and practical tips on how to understand your body’s ability to heal and get back to a state of health.