Peter Attia· MD
okay so for example you bring up depression and catastrophic pandemic of that and you know there's a whole shopping list by now of genes that have been implicated and probably the single most important one it's called the gene for the serotonin transporter and serotonin SSRIs Prozac all of those serotonin is just like we're right in the middle of what we understand about the neuro chemistry in the depression and it turns out this serotonin transporter gene comes in a few different flavors a few different genetic variants and a ton of basic research rats monkeys etc suggested that if you had one particular variant you were more at risk for major depression okay so this classic work this guy had to coughs um Cosby you sort of a God in the field goes out and he follows like seventeen thousand people from birth up to age 25 or so he's got genetic information of them and he's able to ask this critical question okay if you have the quote bad version of this gene by age 25 are you more likely they have a history of clinical depression what's the prevalence of the gene approximately it depends on the population in his population his was a mixed one but westernized Western urine populations I think it's got about a twenty percent incidence so the question then is of those twenty percent how many go on to get depressed of the eighty percent how many go on to get depressed the answer is very likely going to be it's not a one-to-one mapping it might be an increase in risk by some factor and what they saw was overall there was no increase in risk having the bad variant however if it was coupled with a lot of childhood stress you had about a twenty fold increase in the risk so just to be clear on aggregate there was no difference the hazard ratio is one for with gene verses without because of the ton of variability but if you wanted to amplify it take that gene and expose it to childhood stress or trauma and you almost assure depression you get a massive boost in predictability look at people without the scare and vulnerability variant and look at the same severity of childhood stressors and loss and you got a moderate increase and incidence of depression these folks massive order of magnitude multiples of that more increase there what that tells you is this is a gene whose variants alter how readily you deal with experiential kicks in the ass is growing up and it turns out these different variants are regulated in different ways by glucocorticoid Soha so there's a stress angle all of that the same way there's another change the people were interested in the genetics of aggression this gene model would mean oxidase and it comes in variants and that's and there's a class of drugs that targets these yup receptors you know again a ton of basic research had suggested ooh there's a scary variant of it which if you have it you are good at more be more predisposed towards violence and in fact the same group working with the same population massive data set lines of showing just having that variant doesn't get you a higher risk of antisocial violent behavior by age 25 if and only if it was coupled with abuse childhood abuse growing up oh if you didn't have the scary variant childhood abuse a little bit of an increased risk have this variant with the abuse and it was virtually the same figure as with the serotonin transporter gene huge boost there over and over the genes that are interesting when it comes to this stuff these are all genes about vulnerability and potentialities and tendencies that are emerging only in certain environments and not and others they're the factors are inseparable