AMA #50: Genetics: how they impact disease risk, what you can do about it, testing, and more

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
Hey, everyone, welcome to a sneak peek, Ask Me Anything or AMA episode of the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. At the end of this short episode, I'll explain how you can access the AMA episodes in full, along with a ton of other membership benefits we've created. Or you can learn more now by going to peterattiamd.com forward slash subscribe. So without further delay, here's today's sneak peek of the Ask Me Anything episode.
Welcome to Ask Me Anything, episode number 50 In today's episode, we focus heavily on genetics.
If you've listened to previous episodes, you've heard us touch on genetics in terms of a few genetic risk factors for various diseases, most notably the APOE4 gene in Alzheimer's disease. However, we really haven't spent time discussing how exactly genetics relate to disease more broadly and why it's so valuable to know these risks. In today's AMA, we've gathered a lot of questions that you've poured in over the past couple of years, and we cover a variety of items. We cover some fundamental background on genetics, reasons for getting genetic testing, when it is useful, when it is not, and what types of tests are available, what the testing logistics are, and how to interpret the results.
All of this will help give us a foundation for when we talk about commercial, direct-to-consumer genetic tests and considering when they're useful, as well as which ones stand out and what the best options are for anyone looking to learn about their health. I think this is really an important discussion around a topic that we see a lot of people talk about, we see a lot of questions about. But truthfully, there are some fundamental things that I think are not necessarily understood by the public, and I tend to think that people overweight the importance of genetic testing. I've certainly been vocal about that. But I want to call out areas where I think genetic testing can be valuable. And I hope that this AMA really lays that foundation so that you can become a more valuable consumer of genetic tests.
Finally, I think this will provide a great foundation for any upcoming discussions we have on the topics of genetics. And I know that we have at least one really interesting one in the pipeline. So if you're a subscriber and you want to watch the full video of this podcast, you can find it on our show notes page.
If you're not a subscriber, you can watch the sneak peek of the video on our YouTube page. So without further delay, I hope you enjoy AMA number 50

**SPEAKER_1** (2:33)
Peter, welcome to another AMA. How are you doing?

**Peter Attia** (2:35)
Doing well, how about you?

**SPEAKER_1** (2:36)
I'm doing good. How's the day so far?

**Peter Attia** (2:38)
It's going okay.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:41)
Well, we'll get right into this one. I think it should be a good one, mainly because it's really on a subject that we get a lot of questions on, but we haven't talked about this heavily in detail. I was actually looking back and some of this was covered, a very small section in AMA number eight. So way, way back in the day with you and Bob. But for people who have listened to the podcast, they'll have heard us touch on genetics, but often in terms of how genetic risk factors for disease. So the most notable example of what we've talked about is ApoE and the ApoE4 and Alzheimer's disease.
But we've never really spent a lot of time discussing how exactly genetics relate to disease, haven't really talked about why it's so valuable to know these risks.
And we get a ton of questions on these, mainly from people who are saying, hey, I can do this direct-to-consumer test. I can do this direct-to-consumer test. Are they valuable? What do they tell me?
What do they not tell me? And so compiled all those questions, and we're gonna really focus today just to understanding at a basic level, genetics, reasons for genetic testing, types of tests available, how to interpret results, which will really frame the conversation on when thinking about commercial direct-to-consumer DNA tests, where are they useful? Where are they not? How should someone think about them? So I think anyone who listens to the podcast is gonna find value in this topic. It's a topic we really haven't covered in detail ever before. So I think it's gonna be really good and hopefully really interesting for a lot of people. So with all of that said, anything you wanna say before we get started?

**Peter Attia** (4:26)
No, I don't think so. Let's get into it.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:28)