welcome to the everything epigenetics podcast where we discuss DNA regulation and the insights it can tell you about
your health I’m Hannah went and I’m the founder of everything epigenetics today
my guest is Dr Candace Lewis we have a very fun podcast for you
all today we really talk about Candace in the lab she runs called bear it
stands for brain epigenetics and altered state research at Arizona State University we really dive into what she
studies and talk about how this affects every aspect of life she not only looks
at everything at the cellular level but she also looks at everything at the physiological level and then the family
level and the societal level as well we talk about her editorial she wrote in 2023 called what is up with psychedelics
anyways we know that’s a new sexy hot topic nowadays we also talk about how genetics
sheds light on psychedelic therapy and we even break down one of her pilot
studies published in Frontiers in 2023 that suggest DNA methylation of the
glucocorticoid receptor Gene NR 3c1 is associated with MDMA assisted therapy
treatment response for severe PTSD we also talk about her psychedelic
Genome Project why it’s important and how you can get involved and we really
also discussed during the entirety of this call just all of the projects that she’s working on and what really excites
her we then end by talking about her research focusing more on social stress
exposures and how those experiences can shape Dynamic regulation of Gene systems
underlying cognitive emotional and Behavioral Health through development a little bit about my guest
today Dr Lewis grew up in rural Alaska where she was exposed to high rates of poverty mental illness violence and
addictions and those personal experiences that she went through really drove her commitment to revolutionize
mental health understanding treatment and even policy change to this end she earned a masters in counseling a PhD in
behavioral neuroscience and studied genomic science at a leading institution and studied psychedelic science at the
University of Zurich like I mentioned she’s at the be lab where she really focuses on three different things the
impact of early life social experiences on epigenetic regulation of Gene systems involved in mental health she even
studies the relationship between peripheral epigenetics and brain structure so function the microbiome
composition and even behavior and then number three which is my personal favorite as we dive into on the podcast
as well is the potential of psychedelic assisted therapy to reduce symptoms through psychological healing and
epigenetic alterations through her research she aims to to acknowledge the harm caused
by psychology and genetic Sciences on minority groups increasing diversity in training and study cohorts and really
pushing to change policy to improve health for all when not working Dr Lewis
enjoys family time with her three sons and wife going to festivals hiking running reading creative writing and
talking all things spirituality social justice and science now for my guest
Candace Lewis I hope you all enjoy welcome to the everything epigenetics
podcast Dr Lewis I’m so excited to have you here today thanks for being here of course I’m happy to be here yeah so
we’re just going to jump right into it you know you run the brain epigenetics and Altered States research lab or be
Lab at Arizona State University and this is the first time we’ve ever chatted I know I reached out to you via email to
to get you on here so I know just very little about your story and and how you got into this field besides what’s on
your your beautiful Lab website so us off and and tell me more about yourself how you ended up in the bear lab tell me
a little bit more on what that Journey looks like wow so much so many years um
okay so I did not grow up thinking I was going to be an academic or a scientist
um you know I thought which a lot of kids in the 90s did I don’t know if they still do the scientists were like old
white dudes wearing lab coats playing with green fluids um and it was in undergrad that I
realized that I really love school and I just was working really hard I was working full-time while trying while you
know getting straight A’s and um I happened to come across this Fellowship called The Truman Fellowship which I
decided to apply for not really knowing what it was and it turns out that it is a highly competitive national
scholarship to go to grad school um after an arduous application Pro um process I got it and it’s so funny
because during the interview process they said do you want to get a master’s or a PhD and I was like I don’t know the difference is because that’s how much I
not prepped to go to graduate school and it was in graduate school that I really
kind of was exposed to um the idea of studying stress and the idea of studying
early life stress and the idea that there’s this whole science around understanding um how it affects us at
the biological level we’ve known for a long time that behaviors are associated with early life stress right there a
really large predictor for most psychiatric disorders um PTSD depression anxiety disorders substance use
disorders and uh that really called to me because I grew up in a chaotic home where I was
in and out of foster care and um and I we were also you know we lived in deep
poverty and we were in rural Alaska so I saw a lot of this around me in a lot of different ways I mean Alaska is like has
some of the highest rates per capita for a lot of these disorders um so I was in a lab I was
studying stress I was like find myself now and I’m I’m an academic I’m a PhD and it was my first year as a grad
student that I learned about epigenetics and it was just kind of just coming onto
the scene you know um it was just getting really big the field was exploding with the idea that epigenetics
are not just static Regulators of cellular differentiation but that at at least
some parts of the epigenome it is it can be responsive to early life experiences
and by responsive you know I mean that like it’s going to change it’s going to adapt in that those regulatory changes
stay consistent or are longterm and in effect they change Gene
transcription which changes um everything about the cellular makeup of
the brain which then the brain is what’s regulating all physiology and behavior so I was just like this is amazing my
mind was blown I fell in love immediately and like this is it and at the time I was studying addiction um at
an animal model of addiction and I was like you know so early life stress influences drug and take beh avior in
rodents we know that um so instead of you know instead of staying in this cortisol stress reactivity depression
findings that the field was really focused on I decided to look at is early life stress influencing epigenetic
regulation in brain regions associated with um with addiction and so that was
my graduate work and it was it was great you know like we really we really showed this this causal pathway between early
life stress altering epigenetic regulation in the nucleus thatum core and that being associated with the
animals different um methamphetamine intake Behavior we were also able to reverse those epigenetic changes and
showed a decrease in drug andtake Behavior so that was like my background that’s what started it all and I’ve been
doing it ever since yeah thanks for the introduction that’s that’s quite a story that you know the application of really
how understanding how stress affects our our body is something I’m personally super passionate about as well I’m just
like a naturally stressed out person like super anxious all of the time and really understanding like what I can do
to actually reverse that so I want to ask you one more question before we move on you mentioned that in the the mice
you were you know measuring the eptic patterns and you actually saw a reversal in that stress um in in those patterns
too so what caused that reversal well unfortunately it was a research method not anything that we can apply to
ourselves in life it was an in it was a viral after injection yeah brain region
but I want to say I want to say though because I think it’s so important right because I I find myself in these types of conversations because I study how you
know maternal care and all these things and all the moms in the audience and I’m a mom too so I get it they’re just like
oh my God I’m messing up my kid I’m messing up their gentics I’m like no no no no I really think that it would
behoove us to understand this new incredibly complex beautiful thing about
our brains that it’s like molecularly adapting to our environment that it’s a good thing so the way that I like to
kind of explain that to people is you know if you’re born human or primate or rat you’re you know and you’re you’re a
pup you’re developing and you’re born into into an environment that has low maternal care low resources high stress
um it would make sense and it is highly adaptive for your brain to be like okay
this is this is this is what I got and I need to be hypervigilant and it modulate gene expression for you to be able to
fight for and seek your needs and hypervigilant is like another word that we call anxiety
today gotcha yeah yeah go ahead keep going I just think that you know I think that
sometimes it’s important to see that um we have you know our current Western model of medical of mental health we
have these disorders and then we all think about them a lot you know people say all the time oh I have OCD well they
don’t really have a diagnosis of OCD but they see themselves in that description and um and a lot of times
people get caught up and what does that mean about my brain what does that mean about my genetics and what does that mean about my children um and I think
it’s just so important to always bring it back even though I studi the biology that the disorder is just a list of
behaviors it’s a list of behaviors that you self-reported at a time and maybe at
that time they made a lot of sense you’re not biologically you know stuck
here to a certain degree right it’s all Spectrum me yeah yeah so yeah you’re saying you know you can e and flow in
and out of kind of these um I don’t know if you want to call them then you know diagnoses or you know time of how you
were feeling right in terms of of those outcomes because yeah I mean I can even reflect back on myself and say hey I
felt more anxious you know during this time because of these things or you know my environment my behavior my
surroundings and so I think what I’m interpreting from what you’re saying Candace is more you know you’re you’re
in control right it’s how you’re feeling and and different things can can trigger that again that environment or that
behavior and maybe it’s not necessarily always a negative feeling too there’s maybe some positive connotation behind
that yeah I mean I think you know I think control is a tricky word to use um um especially when we start bringing
systemic issues however I guess yes the idea is sometimes anxiety makes a lot of sense
for what life’s throwing at us and sometimes being really sad makes a lot of sense for what life’s throwing at
us and um yeah and I’m just really interested in that throughout the lifespan right our brain um our brain is
adapting to that yeah I like that I’m gonna have to sit on that more and like actually you know do a lot of like self-reflection so
thank you that’s a that’s a really good you know introduction to this entire podcast um I want to dig a little bit
more deeper though into exactly what you’re studying um so yeah if you want to give your own explanation of you know
what is the Bayer lab which is an awesome acronym and what exactly are you studying now what are you most passionate about so I think about my
research in um two kind of parallel lines I like to look at the things that
are affecting us early in life that may be predisposes towards these behaviors that we call psychiatric symptoms so um
okay so that’s the one track what are the things that are happening to us that are potentially altering epigenetics of
genes that are involved in things like mood and cognition and stress physiology
right and these are the underlying pillars of the psychiatric disorders additionally I’m interested in um if
we’re so susceptible to these um to these hard experiences to
these experiences that are telling us you’re not that safe then is there then what’s the inverse what are the
experiences that we can be having that say like you are safe um and our and
does our epigenome respond to those as well so in that sense um I also am
interested in looking at psychedelic therapies and the idea that potentially um in a very similar way in which our
body responds to these moments that are screaming like you’re not safe so you should be responding and altering is it
possible that psych different Psy compounds are inducing a similar type state where your body is responding and
be like okay I actually am safe I can I should be modifying to adapt to that new found um
experience so but one thing I want to unpack about that quickly is because the semantics right we uh we always get back
in the semantics so trauma people ask me this a lot well what do you think trauma
is and I think that you know we have the ace lists right those 10 things or like
the yes or no you know and the DSM is still pretty pretty hardcore clinging to the idea that there has to be like a
threat to safety um whether perceived or even witnessed of someone else however I
like there’s so much data showing that it doesn’t have to be this really really strong what we would call trauma to
shape us so like what I mean by that you know have a lot of people they go to therapy and they’re depressed and maybe
they’re anxious and maybe they have a substance use issue and they’re like nothing happen me nothing happened to me I had a great childhood my parents were
married we had resources I was on the basketball team and so it’s confusing for them because they can’t check the
trauma um lists however I think that there’s so much more going on with like
attachment attachment and safety and if you look through the attachment field and you look at the
like long-term associations with disorganized or non-safe attachment while you’re
younger they look a lot like the same effects trauma go and you’re just by that too
you’re just talking about like different attachment Styles is that correct just to clarify well um that one even gets
really tricky because like there’s the science of attachment Styles and then there’s this like fake pseudo parenting
theory that came out a long time ago it’s like never put your baby down so that word gets really tricky to use to
people too I’m using the word attachment because I’m because I want it to Encompass so much more of childhood
experiences than just trauma but it’s you know I think that probably there’s a lot more layers to it so like emotional
availability is something that comes up which you know could be nested under attachment but really it’s the perception it’s the childhood perception
am I loved am I safe what are the conditions that I have to meet to earn those
things and then I think how far that child has to deviate from their authentic self to meet those
conditions is a is a very um it’s a experience that is very shaping
throughout childhood so I think what kind of ends up happening with a lot of these people who can’t check the trauma
box is you dig deeper and you’re like okay um yeah maybe maybe I really felt
that Mom and Dad didn’t love me unless I got all a so no I’m not talking about trauma
like at that moment right we’re not call call that trauma but I’m interested in the whole gamut because there’s so much
literature out there showing that those experiences shape us too those experiences can their lie anxiety
you know yeah a lot of high performers this you know right now I think we are seeing a world of like
everyone you know in a certain age bracket it’s like I’m so anxious and like I really think that there’s this
like generational reason of you know the expectations that we put on them to
school work Sports manners absolutely I think like I I think I fall in that category um
absolutely and uh it’s it’s interesting too so yeah you’re doing a lot of cool stuff at the bear be lab you know you’re
interested in what’s like happening to us to affect these disorders the experiences we’re having um you know
showing us that if we’re safe or not and and we’re really going to dig into that on the podcast today but I like that you
also mentioned hey it doesn’t have to be trauma it can be this like attachment it can be trying to fill fulfill this image
or I really like how you put even deviating from your authentic self so um
you know I’m sure yeah trauma you can talk about it in in many different ways or other things have happened to you and
I don’t know that I’ve even ever shared this on my podcast before either but you know grandmother passed away from
Alzheimer’s that was a really large event that happened in my family and not necessarily even myself going through it
but seeing like my mom go through it right and seeing how she grieved you never want to see people you love being
upset and hurt um my dad passed away at a super young age unexpectedly from a cardiac related event right so those I
would say you know maybe they fit in that traumatic kind of category but also I did just feel the need to perform like
I got straight A I played you know five sports year round and not because my parents were like you know you need to
get straight A you need to get straight A’s but I did feel this like untalked about like pressure right um whether it
was like definitively stated or or not um and you know that could be the underlying reason I I’m obviously you
know gonna gonna dig into that a little bit deeper as well but I thought it was was an interesting piece thank you for sharing all of that right and I and I
think that your example it so shines a light on why this is hard not a list of
10 things we can check yes to like you said maybe it was never even said to you
but it was felt right right and it just goes kind of unsaid and yeah you’re trying to meet these expect expectations
and it’s not necessarily the the truth but rather the story you’re you’re making up about it so yeah I I think
it’s just cool you’re you’re looking at all different um aspects not just like the ace um you know kind of check box or
or scores you’re really digging into almost like that social aspect of like the humans and us like actually
living uh which I think goes missed a lot of the times in in this type of research I I I constantly am reminding
people when I talk about my research that like I for the most part I’m never talking about an individual um I’m
talking kind of about a a system and systemic issues and cultural um you know
right because so here example I have a paper that looks at harsh parenting so
parents self-reported and it was it happened to be on moms we used Prim married caregiver and that cohort it was all moms um they self-reported when the
kids were 2 years old and it was things like you know screaming yelling um
threatening throwing spanking the type of things that you cannot to get your
children removed from for DF from Child Services um and then we looked at the
Children’s epigenetics when they were 8 years old parent self-report of harsh parenting was able to predict DNA
methylation of nr3 C1 the glucocorticoid receptor and other HPA genes so for a little bit
of background for to explain that system so the HBA system is the hypothalmic pituitary adrenal system it is the
system that that um is responsible for your cortisol response to stress and um
chronic levels of uh chronic high levels of cortisol has been well documented to
be associated with with many psychiatric and neurogenerative disorders actually and wreaks havoc on your immune system
like this is a well-known thing chronic cortisol is not a good thing and the um the Weaver 04 the big paper that made
the huge spash that looked at maternal care and rodents this was the gene that they really looked at um so we were a
you know and then after that a lot of the human studies followed up with these big trauma cohorts so um yeah the you
know the more than the trauma category cohorts and I wanted to follow that up with harsh parenting and we sound we
found that same relationship right yeah um and so I’m writing the discussion of this paper and
I stop and I think oh my gosh I sound like Freud I was like I can’t publish this I’m just I I’m saying everything’s
mom’s fault like it’s kind of like take home of the message moms no matter what you do you’re G to screw your kids up and stop yelling it’s like I yell at my
kids sometimes because life’s hard sometimes that’s the it happens you know what I mean so I like I can’t put
this out there um but I think it’s so important so what do I do so what I did is I dove into the literature of what
predicts harsh parent ing it’s a societal issue it’s not mom’s
fault okay so I was able to find all this research so like here here are some of the high hitters lack of sexual
education lack of uh birth control availability poverty marriages uh forced
marriages you know not not chosen marriages inequal distribution of Labor
not having paid paternal leave these are systemic
things that are all throughout America and it leads to very high levels of
stress for millions of us that are living paycheck to pay Jack did not have
access to sexual education yada yada yada and so I put that paragraph in there that is a very rare paragraph to
find in a molecular biology research paper but I think it is so important
last thing I was giving this talk I was giving that talk one time at an International Conference and I stopped in the middle of that slide and I looked
at them in the room and I go none of you understand what I’m talking about cuz none of them are
Americans they were all Western they’re all from a Western European country in all of their countries all of those
policy things that I just listed they don’t share those issues and I was just blown away
by yeah I study the family I study the individual and I study molecules and I’m a neuroscientist so I’m all about the
biology but I think for me and for my lab it’s so important to recognize how
the bigger picture is affecting all of our biology absolutely well said very well
said you’re looking at the entire picture I really I literally got like chills and goosebumps as you were going through that I’m like wow um yeah so
that actually was not a paper I I was like going to bring up pretty intentionally on the agenda today
because I I like got the paddle like I remember like my mom and dad like you know screaming yelling like I got
spanked when I like would get out of line and I have two younger sisters so it got better like they didn’t get you
know as much punishment as as I did Growing Up I’m I’m the oldest um and I was like you know what I don’t think I’m
going to bring that one up or ask about it because like I’m kind of embarrassed of like you know that like entire thing
and I don’t want people to think my mom’s a bad person because she’s not you know what I mean um but yeah I must have
even skipped through and obviously you know didn’t dive into all of the details there and like hit on that like one
paragraph because that is so important where you’re like okay I’m not going to blame the person for being that way I’m
going to ask like what why like why are they actually being that way um so
that’s huge thank you for explaining that and um you know like thanks for sharing and know your mom’s a wonderful
mom and um it’s even so in harsh parenting and a corporal punishment it
is it is a very tricky topic right now right it’s very tricky and what we’re finding is that these kind of like
negative long-term consequences then it’s mostly in white
kids and and people are having a hard time replicating it in African-American and Hispanic
cohorts and I think that one could you know go in for a long time to to kind of say why but to
me they um culturally they also have much higher levels of emotional availability with their
children so so kind of like kind of back to your experience and like you know witnessing death in your family um so
hard right it was so hard and getting spanked by your parents it could be so hard but all of these things that
children can be exposed those to the really important other side of that is not just the
exposure it’s what what’s the package yeah every everything together
everything together what are the resilience factors because if you know if I was not close to my parents at all
um and I feel like they didn’t know me and I was kind of scared of them and I got spanked like I could see how that
would be really horrible as opposed to if I’m like really close to my parents and I know that they are my everything and they have my back and and you know
all of that package and they SP me once in a while I was like I probably deserved it I was being a little brat I don’t know you know what I mean so this
just like again I like always want to bring it back to it’s just so much bigger than any one research paper can
ever actually explain it and the media so often finds these papers and it gets
really confusing exactly yeah the whole reason I have this podcast essentially is like to break this down and to talk about it
because again it’s so individualized too you can’t just point to like one General cohor or or kind of populationbased
study I mean of course when we go into the biology and the gluc cortico receptor elements and you know regulating cortisol and things like that
of course we can make you know more of those generalized statements but it really is so situational specific
because of how you’re interpreting things you’re interactions your relationship with self and and kind of
taking taking that deeper dive so thanks for for bringing up up that paper I want to switch gears now to Candace and and
really dive into psychedelics so that’s a big part of of research um super
excited to jump in you wrote an editorial in 2023 called what is up with psychedelics anyway and I think that’s a
perfect place to start so yeah what what’s up with psychedelics it’s you know the new sexy hot topic that that
everyone’s talking about so give us an introduction there what is up with psychedelics so I
think we all have like the general background narrative right um became popular in the 60s and like the hippies
use them in Woodstock and free love flowers and then they became schedule
one substances which means the federal government regards them as completely unsafe with no medical use whatsoever
even MDS cannot prescribe them um High rates High um danger of addiction so
that’s schedule one and then a lot of propaganda came out for a lot of decades right so like I love I love asking
people what have you heard so some of my favorites are okay so there’s the chromosomal split like there was some kind of paper back in the day about like
LSC is going to be like breaking open your chromosomes and then there was the uh if you take LC once it gets stuck in
your cerebral spinal fluid the rest of your life and every time you sneeze you’re going to trip um and then of course the big you’re going to think
you’re an orange and peel your skin off and you’re going to think you can fly and jump out the window so these this was it this was reiterated over and over
again for decades um and so research took a sharp um you know stopping point
and then they’ve kind of come back so the you know there was very there was three very small trials that came out of
UCLA John Hopkins and New York University I don’t even know how long ago now probably 15 20 years ago that
looked at treating depression and anxiety symptoms in cancer
patients using a psilocybin therapeutic protocol and the results were you know
really really great small small sample size so you can’t do so much about it at that point but it really was the jumping
off point for what we’re seeing now so what we’re seeing now is we have MDMA which is the active
component in ecstasy is currently under review by the FDA for a treatment for
PTSD so phase three trials have been completed the FDA will tell us there um their outcome in August s the cybin has
been given granted breakthrough breakthrough status um two separate times for treating depression and we’re
currently still seeing a lot of phase two Trials come out and um then there’s a lot of little oh and then also still
ayin for substance use disorders we’re in phase two trials right now as well um
and I realized I gave a talk a couple weeks ago and I had a question afterwards that was like so what happens
you know if they like stop taking the siloc cybin and they don’t feel good anymore and I was like oh no no no no
they’re not like taking soloc cyon and that really made me pause to like think about that I live in a bubble and maybe
everyone doesn’t understand this so much so when we say psychedelic assisted therapy in today’s modern world there
did used to be a couple different versions of it but right now like kind of the standard protocol that people are using is you you start a relationship
with your therapists typically there’s two of them you build rapport this is the same exact thing we do in standard therapy and during that process you’re
also choosing your intentions you’re choosing your targets that you want to be working on while the dosing session
happens that’s also very similar to standard therapeutic practices today that you set goals with your
therapists um and there’s preparation right so you’re told what to expect um
which really helps with a lot of people’s anxiety around going into a new experience that you know their whole life and their parents life were told
you know split their chromosones and so then you have your dosting session like you know you know
um and during that session you’re there’s a lot of being
invited to go inward into kind of seeing where you go yourself but your therapists are there to support you when
needed and then after that the different trials have different numbers one two or three trials um one two or three dosing
sessions in the different trials I’d say is most common and then you have integ ation where you like talk about what
insights you may have gained from those experiences so that’s kind of like the Psychedelic model right now it’s not
we’re not replacing ssris with um psilocybin and again this can be really confusing and I get why because as the
clinical trial uh psychic assisted therapy movement was growing so was micro doing but like most people realize
that the micro doing movement was not scientific it was blogs
but they all Rose to the same occasion so I can see how it’s very very easy to be very confused of like micro do things
the new depression treatment so I think like more more research will be done on micro doing we will we will find out
more uh but there there’s very little actual like controlled you know data on
it at the moment yeah yeah and you know psychedelics we’re going through this
like massive change right now I feel like in in the US they’re still legal in in some parts like organ I think in 2020
in Colorado in November of 2022 um but really it’s going to vary like depending on your your state the specific
substance you know it’s been decriminalized in in specific cities so we know this is a huge growing interest
and you know acceptance of these potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelics especially for conditions
uh that you know you’re looking into like depression PTSD um and anxiety and some cases they may be super helpful but
um yeah so the the legalities I think make it a little bit bit of a a wishy-washy even subject to to even talk
about so um yeah they’re they’re pushing them through these these trials um you know and then uh I think we’ll learn a
lot in in August with with MDMA being in in phase three yeah it’s funny my mom was visiting me a couple weeks ago and
she knows what kind of research I do but we never really talk about it it’s she’s like so tell me like it’s funny kind of the title of my editorial maybe I should
just send it to her what what’s up with psychedelics anyway I think is what she said to me she like well like what is it doing
why does it work like what what is this and I was like wow like and I kind of felt like I was put on the spot and was
and I kind of fumbled my way through explaining to her and I was like basically like this is my best like non-scientific way you know I like this
is not the way I’d say it in a paper but I maybe say it to a person
um they’re putting you in a state where therapy becomes much more accessible so
your cognitive capacities are not you know at your highest right like let’s like let just go ahead and name that no
one wants you to go driving a car when you’re tripping on mushrooms because your cognitive capacity is hard
impaired and some people might think well like well then how can you do therapy but in reality um it kind of
helps to be able to break free from the cognitive protections we have built
around our narrative our whole life you know so like whether it was
trauma or whether it was just the extreme pressure to perform a lot of us haven’t
actually sat in what that means to us and how it feels in our body we avoid it
avoid avoid avoid avoid so in that state maybe like your your you know cognitive
defenses are down a little bit and you have these profound feelings of safety
and unity and love for yourself and others so now all of a
sudden you feel safe enough in your body to go there wherever there is for you
right so I imagine in the beginning with these cancer patients there was the was
the real real exploring of of the fact that they’re about to
die yeah yeah I mean that makes sense and I I’ve never done the the uh psychedelic assisted therapy personally
myself I know a lot of people who have and they explain it as something where
you know it’s like you go to your your best friend or your closest friends and you’re able to give them advice right and tell them exactly what to do and
like you know feel the feelings and everything but like you would never take your own advice or even like talk to
yourself in that same kind Voice or that that same way so I think that’s an an interesting and unique perspective there
um so it’s really yeah about peeling back those layers and and feeling safe which you know this is a a fun maybe
exercise too think of like the last time you just like sat with yourself like you were on your phone you didn’t have some
type of I was goingon to say stimulus but like stimuli around you whether it it’s a screen a TV um you know when the
last time you actually said like am I happy or you know what am I doing today how does that make me feel I think we’re
so disconnected with ourself even without the Psychedelic therapy um that there are so many things that we can do
beforehand and you know personally I just got um uh I I just got went through
a transcendental meditation program and got certified there and you know even waking up doing you know 23 minutes in
the morning 23 minutes at night and just sitting without nothing and just having my mind run free and be able to you know
transcend and relax like I really do think it’s made a world of difference in my you know anxiety per se um or kind of
how I’m feeling yes I couldn’t agree more and I want to add to it that for a lot of
people they have never felt safe not once in their life and that’s
why I’m so interested in early life trauma early life stress early life experiences because you know in the
first few years of our life our brain is building like it’s not preset it’s preset in in the ways that we are human
right our our human brains are going to build pretty similarly however it is responding to our experiences and so kind of going
back to those early examples like maybe maybe you weren’t safe and so your you know your brain and your physiology kind
of built up around that knowing um and so I think for a lot of
these meditation Traditions spiritual traditions and even Psychotherapy Traditions which are highly similar if
anyone ever chose to sit down and actually study it all um for me personally it was always very
lonely um to like be studying the spiritual traditions and be constantly um referred to like well you can feel
your inner Love by you know like it’s like a mother’s love ouch ouch for all
of those who never felt it you know and in therapy there’s this expectation that our patients are
they’re reaching for something right like we want like what are your goals oh to feel better oh you know not hate
myself uh whatever they’re reaching for something that they’ve maybe never felt so I think that there’s this whole
other level for um the Psychedelic experience that it and I can this is
something that I can say from my personal experience it provided me the first taste of what safety even feels
like and there was no chance that me as an individual could have reached that
state without being shown what that state was yeah that makes sense absolutely I have
a um I have an adopted son and he’s such a supernova he’s so amazing uh we got him at five he had a lot of trauma and I
can already see the same things in him like I I can already see that like he is 10 now and he’s gotten so much love and
safety and you know just you know he has gotten from our F from his you know his
second family all of the things um but he didn’t have them the first 5 years
and I can can still see how his uh his physiology it’s you know it’s stressed
it’s not relaxed and it’s because it was built that way yeah yeah interesting
it’s it’s interesting too how you’re able to like yeah look at you know your son that way and you know really pair it
up with the the research and everything that you’re studying I mean it’s like a an example right in front of you and and
someone who I’m sure you you love dearly so absolutely I’m you know yeah definitely want to to go down the the
Psychedelic assist therapy at at one point in my life we’ll see if it’s you know within the next year within the next five or so but um I’m excited when
the time comes for sure so to get back to the biology a little bit because I feel like yes this is your epics podcast and I keep taking it to all these other
plac good which is the Crux of what I do right like I it can be yeah like I am at
this like molecular level but I go out and it’s it’s fun for me and sometimes challenging because in a room of
psychologists and I can speak their language and they’re just like I don’t know what you’re talking about with molecules and then I try to talk to the room of biologist just about B you know
about molecules and they’re like I don’t know what you’re talking about what is attachment so that’s the seat I sit in
um okay so the biology here’s we don’t know we don’t know what we don’t know
what is happening at the biological level that makes the epigenome or makes these uh dnmts and methyl transferases
like why are they changing like what is the signal that you know the methylation on your nr3 C1 Gene is like whoop we
need to change this up we don’t know uh there’s still so much we don’t know um
so what I find very interesting is the similarities between acute stress and a
psychedelic state so this is what I mean by it so the psychological level they’re both really highly Salient right like
when if you know you get in a car wreck and when that memory is like in there um
and for the Psychedelic experience all the older you know the older data from John Hopkins it’s like 97% of people
said it was the top f one the top five experiences of their whole life so you have this really
Salient impactful psychological State okay neurochemically you have increased
levels of Serotonin dopamine cortisol glutamate stress does the same thing
we’re increasing levels of those physiologically you have increased heart rate increased blood pressure in um um
and a couple others might be forgetting the physiological level right so when we take out the idea of okay was that
traumatic or was it healing the state can be very is very
similar and I wonder if there’s something about and this is not there’s no data to back this up this is me you know talking about my ideas as
scientists um I’m just wondering if there’s a clue there because we don’t know why when why the epome response or
experiences I’m wondering if there’s some Clues because they’re so similar on the outside of you can have an acute
traumatic experience and your behavior changes right right that is what we refer to is like well this person came
back from war and now they have PTSD what having PTSD means is behavior so
they had experiences that changed their behavior then if we look at the Psychedelic literature and all of the
the nonscientific stories people say I had this experience and I
changed so to me there it’s possible that there that we could use the
Psychedelic model to understand more about what is the biology
underlying our EP our epome responding to our changes in a way that shape
Downstream physiology and behavior yeah yeah and so yeah you know
you’re seeing that the same exact process if you’re not assigning anything to them you’re seeing the same thing
essentially so you have this experience and then it’s changing the behavior it’s changing the outcome and you know you you notice those difference like you
mentioned with the NR 3c1 um gluc cortic cord receptor um Gene and now you have this this theory
of you know what can that tell us is there a way that you imagine actually like measuring that and diving into that
like I feel like it’s like yeah how how do you even go P that how how do you like study that hanana the amount of
ideas I have for studies I don’t have the time or money
to do them all and really even the expertise I think a lot about cell culture being a lot of the um about
being the model that potentially I’m going to need to kind of dive into the these Realms of my questions I I currently do not have a cell culture set
up in my lab but um but yeah I think I think there’s just still so many
questions about the epome so for example in all of my research I can I keep consistently coming across these openc
cpg sites do you know what these are should I give some background on that yeah let’s give some background on open open in the in the DNA mation world we
have really cute uh jargon so we have our Islands which are cpg sites cpg
sites are just like the location in which we primarily study methyl groups even though it’s not the only place to
happen and um these islands are defined by being around the promoter of a gene
which just means it’s the start of the Gene and if you block the start of the gene you’re going to decrease that Gene
from happening so if you look into the epigenetic literature you know around
exposures and psychiatric behavior and like this whole new like neuroepigenetics field
the vast majority of them are only looking at Islands like the vast majority of them because the biological
consequence of methyl groups there is is pretty well understood if you have
methyl groups you’re blocking transcription you’re decreasing Gene um Gene products however um there are cpg
sites across the whole Gene and there are cpg sites in between genes and um and my data keep showing
them be very important um um but I’m looking at their association with phenotype so there’s so many steps in
between what I’m looking at that I can’t tell you like what is what is methylation um at a cpg site in the
third intron doing and I keep I keep reading and I keep trying to read more and more and more and I can’t find a
whole lot out there um so a lot some cancer cancer is where I go to a lot Cancer’s been looking at epics for a lot
longer than neuroscientists have um and it’s a cleaner tissue type and they get to look at their tissue so cancer
epigenetics they get to cut the cancer out and they get to compare it to the non-cancerous tissue right I rarely get
to cut brains out um so it’s a whole another it is a whole another podcast to start talking about the peripheral
epigenome and why it’s related but I would love to sometime um so anyways so
we don’t know so like there’s some evidence that they’re change that they can be changing transcription levels as well methylation across a gene and then
there’s also evidence that they could be changing the iso form so they could be changing uh what part of the gene is
transcribed which then down the road changes the makeup of the protein which down the road changes the function of
the protein which is how we change Behavior like and I think that’s
something I try to drive home for people so much of like I’m over here talking about genes and I’m over here talking
about behavior um everything about your output your behavior is
coming from brain and that’s all proteins baby we talk about receptors and
Transporters and you know dritic Arbiter and like um yeah those are all changes in gene transcription those are you know
those are proteins yeah just there’s so many unknowns even at the cellular level of
like what are we measuring what does this mean yeah I like the the cute little jargon you you use there um which
is yeah so true um but is is that still like a huge area of of interest for you is really diving into the epigenetics
like do you think like most of the answers lie there I mean I know there are a lot of um the entire central dogma
that you need to get through to see the phenotypic outwards expression and then the behavior so there’s a lot of steps and I understand you have to use them
all together to really start to hypothesize as to you know why is this this happening um but do you think the
epigenome holds more of those answers like what’s your your thought there yes
yeah is your question do I want to run a center where I have 10 different people with expertise doing the studies I want them to do
yes yeah I need people yeah I need cell I need cell culture I need U more anal
we do we do animal research in our lab as well which is really great because get brain tissue but even then um even
then we’re still we’re still talking about if you if you get a brain chunk say I want to look we’re looking at different cell types um it’s still very
all so complicated so yes I want to look at the whole picture and yes I think epigenome is holding a lot of
information that we don’t know like a lot a lot a lot I think about a lot I think about a lot about like the genetics and how much when we started
the Human Genome Project we there was a lot of people that were so convinced we
were about to solve all of it and it turns out we only have more questions
like now we know the human genome and we’ve learned a lot and we’re still we’re more confused about the CLX us and
I think I think a lot about Evolution I think a lot about like the um you know
like we all get it we all get the idea we’ve all been taught like uh um a difference came out in a genome and
somehow that difference was advantageous and and boom thousands of years and now more people have and then and the other
one went away and I’ve personally have always found that theory lacking in like really that’s the only thing that
happened so I’m was gonna you know I I think that we’re gonna find out a lot more about that you know think I think
there’s a lot of answers there that we’re all I think it’s gonna take like way outside of my lifetime to answer them all yeah yeah I use that example a
lot with the Human Genome Project and you know how we thought we were gonna like solve all the diseases and cure cancer and you know everything would be
fine um and then we’re like okay cool we have this information but it’s very very limited and like what else is there
there has to be other reasons and other why so I usually compare epigenetics to you know the Human Genome Project it
used to cost like millions of dollars to sequence your genome it used to take like so long and now you know it’s under
$100 it’s less than 24 hours and I think epigenetics like understanding your EPO
especially being able to retest after certain experiences which change those behaviors to start to see those
differentiated methylated regions and those patterns is really what we need and that’s harder to do obviously in the brain because we need brain tissue so
you can just see how those those complexities add add up but nonetheless I think a really good thought experiment
yeah and I will have some papers coming out um soon that you’ll be able to I’ll follow up on me on where we are looking
at neuroimaging metrics so brain structure and looking at DNA methylation of genes highly expressed in those brain
structures but we’re looking at DNA methylation for bual cells and we are showing that they are highly predictive
in certain age brackets yeah so it’s like yeah I’m really excited to uh to to read some of those
those papers so um we’ll definitely have to have another conversation and I I like the peripheral genome example you
gave earlier too so this will this will be the the first of many um and you know I know we’re getting to the end um here
as well Candace I I want to point out I know you have the um pgp or the Psychedelic Genome Project um can you
give our listeners a little bit more information on on what that is like why that’s important can people get involved um in your work yeah wow um so the pgp
we want to collect samples biological samples from clinical trials and or
people using at home and or people in Oregon and soon to be Washington and Colorado that are going to clinics and
we just want a pre and a post saliva sample and then to fill out um some
common questionnaires after your experience so the idea is we want to look at these Baseline epigenetics and
genetic predictors of how did it go for you did you take cbon did you have
Adverse Events you know how did you feel afterwards and then we can kind of start
to um untangle are there genetic are there genetic profiles that we can say
hey this is not a good psychedelic therapy for you there’s a lot of evidence that people that have similar genetic profiles they’re having a lot of
adverse responses right now we just exclude people from trials that if you have any family history of psychosis you
just can’t be in here and so that’s an example like well we could be doing that in a much more modern way and then maybe
you know maybe you do have a family history of psychosis but the genetics suggests that you’re not going to have an Adverse Events and then we want to
look at these prepost like you were saying before the power of the longitudinal model with epigenetics is we can see if um your psychedelic
exposure is related to a change in epigenetics that uh that explains the
change in behavior that you had so the reason but so so basically I just describes like a pretty standard idea
for like a genetic and epigenetic study of exposure however what makes the ggp so different is because we want all the
samples to come to one place so you know we are sitting on about 50 less than
that 40 Years of genetic research and Psychiatry where it was just like it’s a mess because everyone’s doing a genetic
study here they’re doing a genetic study here they’re doing a genetic study here the the samples get processed differently the timelines are different
their behavior data that they’re collecting is different and so now we’ve real and we need big sample sizes for
genomic science so now with the psychiatric world you know like we’re trying to like we’re trying to bring it
all together like let’s everyone share our data let’s everyone put our genetics in the same database let’s see what we can do and that’s great and with
psychedelics we have the opportunity to not have to reverse engineer the issue
we can just prevent it by let’s all join together let’s all psychedelic
researches around the world collect the samples and send them to the same place for processing which is just really gold
standard scientific method yeah for sure yeah I know I I’m definitely going to get involved and and
you know look into that and and submit some data submit my samples I’m even going to do eventually when I do the
Psychedelic uh assistant therapy do like my epome before and after um on you know an epic Ray or something too so i’ would
be super interested in looking at uh the the NR 3c1 gene on on just kind of an N1
level too so I I’ll get back to you on that and share some some data there I love that you’re saying that and of course I know you’re going to but I have
to since you know it’s hard with the N of one Hannah I don’t I don’t want to
set you up for disappointment in either direction yes UND understood completely
give you the group level results perfect let’s do that let’s do that we we’ll we’ll look at both of them
um well awesome now we we covered so many amazing like areas in in this topic it just excites me all over again this
is exactly why why I do this anyways um we’re coming to the close here um one
question I always ask everyone at the end um if you could be any animal in the world what would you be and why well
because life is dynamic and I’m Dynamic and Mya it’s a dynamic that has changed over the
years I like it so you’ve thought about this oh yeah um so when I was younger I was a bald eagle Fierce and strong right
Independence um now and then I went for a long time with a quala bear nickname because I hug with all
Limbs and uh now we’re going to go with
Hannah does everyone always have an answer no no some people like it some people like struggle to answer it yeah
some people are like I know right away but you’re like going through this like evolutionary process so I like this too I don’t think everyone anyone has like
done this because you know you know how my mind works now okay so my answer
right now for right now in this time of my life I’m gonna say is I believe in tools like a toolbox and my goal in life
right now is to have all the tools or not have all of them is to know which ones I’m good at and know which ones I need to get better at so that any given
situation I can pull out the tool that works for that situation so with that being said I guess I’m going to go with
chillion oh I like it I don’t know I wasn’t like expecting anything but I was like I’m I’m I like pride myself in
being authentic and it’s not that tools don’t make you unauthentic tools I think make you help
help you be even more of who you are because you’re choosing how to respond to every situation right right I like it yeah
that’s a good answer that’s a deep answer I like it yeah um cool well we’ve come to the end of this um awesome
podcast interview so for listeners who want to connect with you you know where can they find you how can researchers connect with you um can they reach out
you you can find the be laab email at our um we areth bear.org
um we will be H pushing a very heavy recruitment effort for pgp samples um by
both clinical trials and individuals whether they’re going to a clinic in
organ of their own accord or um at home users however we haven’t started that recruitment process yet um so just keep
a lookout on our website if you’re interested in that cool well I am so excited to get
this episode out um thanks everyone for listening to us at everything EP genics podcast we’ll be linking all of the
research um in the bear lab links below that candus mentioned and remember you have control over your epigenetics so
tune in next time to learn more thanks so much
