FUT2

If you've ever wondered why red wine or aged cheese or leftovers or fermented foods make you feel dreadful when they're supposedly healthy foods, this is often where the answer lies.

It covers FUT2, F-U-T-2, which affects how you interact with your own gut bacteria and your B12 absorption.

And it covers your basic macronutrient handling, whether you run better on higher carbohydrate, on higher fat, on Mediterranean or something closer to the keto.

So now let's talk about, and again, I want to flag something important here that Dr. Sam Shea again described on the show and that I think about often.

Oh.

So with norovirus, there's something called FUT2 and that's the name of a gene.

It's kind of an immunity gene, kind of.

And the reason they worry about it is because it can just take off.

So there is a genetic answer.

There's a gene called FUT2, which is a methylation gene, but it's also highly responsible for your ability to maintain the diversity.

So if you do something to obliterate it, you took an antibiotic, you don't sleep properly or whatever you did, the recovery may lapse for some people.

Now, when I see that genetically, I will tell that person to play a little bit of catch up.

That's so good.

Yeah, it's crazy.

What is the name of that gene? FUT2.

And by the way, when you look up this gene and try and find the science, it doesn't talk about this.

There's 2-focosalactose is one of the primary ones that is found in early breast milk, but then it shifts to 3-focosalactose and other HMOs.

And so I would say getting in a probiotic but making sure either through breast milk, should have lots of HMOs unless genetically there's something called a FUT2 genetics.

Fucotransferase.

Yeah, a variant that may make you less able to secrete HMOs.

And so fiber from fruits and vegetables, resistant starches, prebiotics like onions and asparagus and artichokes and green bananas, diverse plant foods.

The FUT2 gene is one of the main ones here that we talk about a lot of times because FUT2 variants often have lower levels of beneficial bacteria like bifidobacteria, which should be one of the dominant bacterial strains, especially when you're a child.

But you, a lot of times when you do not have this, you know, healthy mutation, you need to work harder to keep diversity and keep kind of infiltrating the gut with prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics to maintain a healthy, diverse microbiome.

So FUT2, unfortunately you struggle to basically keep diversity.

Your, your gut on its own struggles to maintain that.

And then there's another one that we'll see sometimes with NAS2.

NAS2, when under high amounts of stress, really struggle to keep adequate stomach acid levels, which can then, you know, predispose us to be kind of more susceptible to infections and pathogens and bacterial imbalances and things of that nature.

But the FUT2 is the big one here, 'cause it, it really does impact diversity of the gut, which then unfortunately when you don't have good diversity, quote-unquote bad bacteria, the dysbiotic bacteria can be a little bit more plentiful and kind of take over, create inflammation, create imbalances.

So let's start with the hot topic of methylation, right? Methylation's way beyond the MTHFR gene, okay? But people with markers in this pathway, again, it's not just the MTHFR.

It's, it stops, it starts at the top of the FUT2, runs all the way through, genes that impact heart health, homocysteine levels, et cetera.

But simply put, in the United States, we fortify breakfast cereals, store-bought breads, tortillas, et cetera, with folic acid.

If you have markers in this pathway and you cannot take and convert folic acid to the bioactive format of folate, it literally impacts...