Pushing The Limits

Why can one person drink a flat white at 3pm and sleep soundly, while another lies awake until midnight? Why does one glass of wine turn some people bright red? A lot of it comes down to your genes.
In this solo episode, I break down the caffeine and alcohol genes I look at in my clients' myDNA reports, what your results can and can't tell you, and the simple changes that follow.
In this episode:
- How CYP1A2 shapes how long caffeine hangs around, and why your cut-off time matters
- What the research shows about caffeine, genetics and athletic performance
- ADORA2A, and why some people feel caffeine far more strongly than others
- The ALDH2 variant behind the alcohol flush, and why it matters for more than a red face
- The ripple effects: vitamin B1, REM sleep, APOE, and the unfiltered coffee and cholesterol link
- Why genetics loads the gun, and environment pulls the trigger
Find out what your genes say with my DNA Blueprint Package, available in New Zealand, Australia and the USA:
genetics, DNA test, nutrigenomics, myDNA, caffeine, coffee, alcohol, alcohol flush, red face after drinking, ALDH2, CYP1A2, ADORA2A, APOE, caffeine metabolism, sleep, REM sleep, thiamine, vitamin B1, cholesterol, longevity, personalised health, functional medicine, Lisa Tamati, Pushing the Limits
More on thiamine: my full interview with Elliot Overton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qwb_XmDqqk
Chapters:
0:00 Same coffee, different genes
0:18 Why blanket health advice fails
1:00 Your caffeine gene: CYP1A2
2:48 Caffeine, sleep and the cut-off
3:27 Caffeine and athletic performance
4:34 ADORA2A: how strongly you feel caffeine
5:35 Alcohol and the ALDH2 gene
7:45 Ripple effects: B1, sleep, APOE and coffee
10:25 Genes load the gun
11:14 Your next step
Educational content only. Genetics shows tendencies and priorities, not diagnoses.

I ran 70,000km across the world's toughest deserts to lose weight, and I got heavier, more inflamed and sicker every year. I assumed the problem was discipline. It took one genetic test to show me it never was.
In this solo episode I make the case that your DNA is the single most valuable test you will ever do. Not because it tells you the most, but because it is the only test whose result is still true in fifty years. Your bloods reflect the last few weeks. Your microbiome shifts with every trip and every course of antibiotics. Your hormones move across the month and the decade. Your DNA does not move at all.
I go through all eight areas a comprehensive genetic panel covers, what you actually learn from each one, and why a variant is a tendency rather than a verdict.
IN THIS EPISODE
My own results, and the cascade that explains twenty-five years of getting it wrong
Why genetics is different from every other test you will ever do
Genetics loads the gun, environment pulls the trigger: what that actually means in practice
The single-gene trap, and why the MTHFR obsession has it upside down
Digestion, energy, hormones, stress and cognition, inflammation, athletic performance, DNA repair and detoxification, one at a time
The difference between nutritional dosing and nutrigenomic dosing, and why more vitamin D was not working for me
Why genetics alone is not enough, and what has to sit alongside it
Why it is almost never discipline
THE DNA BLUEPRINT PACKAGE
Practitioner-only genetic testing, ninety-two genes and a hundred and thirteen variants across a report of roughly a hundred and twenty-one pages, read by me alongside a full Cell Blueprint assessment and turned into a complete personal health programme in a ninety-minute one-on-one.
Available throughout New Zealand. Australia coming soon.
https://www.lisatamati.com/dna/
GO DEEPER
Dr Sam Shay on methylation, inflammation and exercise-induced obesity:
https://www.lisatamati.com/podcast--dr-sam-shay_1/
Dr Mansoor Mohammed on how your variants change what you eat and how you train:
https://www.lisatamati.com/podcast-mansoor-mohammed/
Read the long-form article:
https://www.lisatamati.com/blog/
ALSO FROM LISA
Re:juvenate Pro, the foundational immune ageing formula from Aevum Labs:
https://shop.lisatamati.com/pages/rejuvenate
Re:NRG, our next-generation NAD support, is coming. Join the waitlist for first access:
https://shop.lisatamati.com/pages/nad-next-gen-waitlist
Weekly longevity insights, free:
https://www.lisatamati.com/lisa
Questions or feedback: lisa@lisatamati.com
Pushing the Limits is hosted by Lisa Tamati, genetics practitioner, co-founder and Chief Science Officer of Aevum Labs, and former professional ultra-endurance athlete. Author of three books and one audiobook.

Your Immune Age Is Lying To You. Here's How To Read Your Blood And Fix It.
How old is your immune system, really?
It's probably not the same age as you are — and that gap may be the single biggest hidden driver of how well you age, how fast you recover, and how long you stay healthy. In this episode I break down what actually happens to your immune system as the years tick over — immunosenescence (the immune system getting weaker) and inflammaging (the silent, smouldering inflammation that never switches off) — and why almost every disease of ageing sits somewhere on that spectrum.
Then I get practical. I'll show you how to measure your immune age from a standard blood test you can get anywhere in the world, using seven scientifically validated ratios (NLR, PLR, MLR, LMR, SII, PIV and ELR) synthesised into a single Immune Resilience Index. We cover the cutting-edge science from Dr David Furman's 1000 Immunomes Project and the iAge inflammatory clock, the TRIIM and TRIIM-X thymus-regeneration trials, the gut-immune connection (70% of your immune cells live in your gut), the cytokines of ageing (IL-6, TNF-alpha, IL-1 beta, NF-kB and IL-10), and how our Re:juvenate Pro formulation was built to target exactly these pathways. If you want to stop guessing and start tracking the system that runs your healthspan, this one's for you
RELATED EPISODES — WATCH THESE NEXT
Dr David Furman | The 1000 Immunomes Project and the inflammatory clock of aging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFOSqEY7CNY
Dr Rod Claycomb | Colostrum, immune proteins and immune resilience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyOfcx9gvbE
Aevum Labs panel | Peter Lehrke, medical herbalist Mike Eyres and Dr Rod Claycomb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EstwHB3p3nI
Dr Elizabeth Yurth | Immune aging and how to slow it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_-_rFXcBIA
THE SCIENCE + RE:JUVENATE PRO Re:juvenate Pro at Aevum Labs: https://aevumlabs.co.nz/products/re-juvenate Aevum Labs: https://www.aevumlabs.co.nz
🌐 Website: https://www.lisatamati.com
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The link between micronutrients and mental health is one of the most overlooked stories in modern medicine, and Professor Julia Rucklidge has spent more than two decades proving it matters. In this episode of Pushing the Limits, she shares the research on micronutrients and mental health that has challenged psychiatry's drug-first model, showing that broad-spectrum vitamins and minerals can treat ADHD, depression and anxiety, often as effectively as medication and without the side effects. If you have ever wondered how deeply micronutrients and mental health are connected, this conversation will change how you think about your brain, your mood and the food you eat every day.
Professor Julia Rucklidge is a clinical psychologist at the University of Canterbury and Director of Te Puna Toiora, the Mental Health and Nutrition Research Lab. She is co-author, with Bonnie Kaplan, of The Better Brain, and her work has been published in leading psychiatry journals and viewed by millions through her TEDx talk. She came into this field as a sceptic, trained to believe that nutrition was irrelevant to the brain, and changed her mind only when the evidence became impossible to ignore.
In this conversation, Julia explains what her clinical trials actually found, and why 60 to 80 percent of people respond to a broad-spectrum approach once you move past the noise of a blinded study. We talk about why feeding the whole system beats chasing a single nutrient, what the biomarkers reveal about inflammation, methylation and the microbiome, and why the RDAs were never designed to support an optimally functioning brain. She makes the case that the recommended daily allowances we rely on were built to prevent deficiency diseases, not to help the brain thrive, and that this gap matters enormously for anyone struggling with their mental health.
We also explore the bigger forces at play: depleted soils and what modern agriculture has done to the nutrient density of our food, the rise of ultra-processed food and why Julia calls it the cigarette of the twenty-first century, and the antidepressant withdrawal that so many people are never warned about. She shares her frustration with New Zealand's outdated supplement regulations, where a product can be effectively banned for containing a fraction too much of a nutrient, and a distributor can be threatened with serious penalties for selling something that genuinely works.
Most of all, this is a hopeful conversation. It is about taking back control of your health through the food on your plate, understanding the real connection between what you eat and how you feel, and recognising that small, consistent changes can have a profound effect on the brain. Whether you are a parent navigating a child's behaviour, someone managing your own mental health, or simply curious about the science of nutrition and the brain, this episode will give you a new lens on what is possible.
If you have ever been told that nutrition is irrelevant to your brain, this episode is for you.
Resources and mentions:
The Better Brain by Bonnie Kaplan and Julia Rucklidge
What Your Food Ate by David Montgomery and Anne Biklé
Te Puna Toiora, Mental Health and Nutrition Research Lab, University of Canterbury
Biography: 
 




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Claude responded: Professor Julia Rucklidge is a clinical psychologist at the University of Canterbury and Director of Te Puna Toiora, the Mental Health and Nutrition Research L…
div]:bg-bg-000/50 [&_pre>div]:border-0.5 [&_pre>div]:border-border-400 [&_.ignore-pre-bg>div]:bg-transparent [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8"> _*]:min-w-0 gap-3 standard-markdown"> Professor Julia Rucklidge is a clinical psychologist at the University of Canterbury and Director of Te Puna Toiora, the Mental Health and Nutrition Research Lab. One of the world's leading researchers in nutritional psychiatry, she has spent more than two decades running placebo-controlled trials showing that broad-spectrum micronutrients can treat ADHD, depression, anxiety and stress, often as effectively as medication and without the side effects. She is co-author, with Bonnie Kaplan, of The Better Brain, and her TEDx talk on nutrition and mental health has been viewed millions of times. Based in Christchurch, New Zealand, she is on a mission to put nutrition where she argues it belongs: as a serious, evidence-based part of how we treat and prevent mental illness.

What if there was an exogenous ketone that didn't go through the liver, didn't cause the GI distress of other ketones, and delivered bioidentical BHB directly to your cells?
In this episode, Lisa sits down with Mike Chesne, founder of Tecton and retired US Army Special Forces combat medic, who spent 25 years in special operations before developing R3HBG — a patented ketone molecule that's categorically different from everything else on the market.
Mike's journey from battlefield medicine to biotech is extraordinary. After suffering multiple traumatic brain injuries from IED blasts during nearly three years of combat, he went through brain injury rehabilitation and discovered the neuroprotective potential of ketones. He asked one question that changed everything: "If I had been in ketosis when I got blown up, how much better would my outcome have been?"
That question led him to Oxford University, to Dr Kieran Clarke's lab, and eventually to designing his own molecule — drawing it on a napkin and spending over a decade turning it into a manufactured, FDA-reviewed product.
In this deep-dive episode we cover:
Mike's military career and the brain injuries that changed his path
The DARPA project that spent $10 million searching for a supplement to boost performance and cognition by 30%
Why the brain in Alzheimer's and TBI can't access glucose but can still take up ketones
R3HBG explained: how lipase (not alcohol dehydrogenase) breaks it down, and why that matters
The differences between BHB salts, R-1,3-butanediol, the original ketone ester, and R3HBG
The NLRP3 inflammasome and how BHB blocks the inflammatory cascade driving neurodegeneration
HDAC inhibition and how BHB switches on your body's own antioxidant and longevity genes
NDI #1354 and what FDA New Dietary Ingredient acceptance means
The GLP-1 agonist connection for weight management and metabolic health
Therapeutic dosing for cognition, endurance, and recovery
Mike's vision to license R3HBG to every ketone company willing to use it
Lisa's experience using ketones with her mother's brain injury and cancer recovery
This is the most comprehensive ketone science episode we've ever produced.
TECTON KETONES: Use this link for a discount https://tectonketones.com/discount/TAMATI
While you're optimising your brain and metabolic health, give your body foundational support with Re:juvenate Pro, my advanced cellular health and longevity formula (https://shop.lisatamati.com/pages/rejuvenate), and explore my full curated range of anti-aging and longevity supplements at shop.lisatamati.com.
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Pushing the Limits is brought to you by Lisa Tamati and the team at lisatamati.com.