Welcome to the Get Fit Guys quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Ben Greenfield. I'm the Get Fit Guy. And in today's episode, you're going to learn how

genetic testing could help you get into shape. Now, a recent blog headline caught my attention. It said, training in

line with your genetic potential can boost your performance gains by more than 600%. So could this

be true? Could you really use your genetics to get massive breakthroughs in fitness? Well, let's first

take a quick look at how genetic testing actually works. So

genetic tests are typically performed on a sample of blood, hair, skin, amniotic fluid, which is the

fluid that surrounds a fetus during pregnancy, or saliva. Most modern, popular DNA tests for

fitness or nutrition, including the one you've likely heard of, 23 and me, use a saliva

sample and a method called a spit test. Although it isn't a map of your entire detailed genome,

which would actually still cost a lot of cash, this direct-to-consumer genetic testing, also known as

at-home genetic testing, allows you to

conveniently get a glimpse of important sections of your DNA, the most important ones, including

parts that affect your fitness. Just one mouthful of your saliva contains a huge amount of biological

material from which your genetic blueprint can be determined, including hundreds of complex protein molecules

called enzymes, along with cells sloughed off from the inside of your cheek. Inside each of these

cells is a nucleus, and inside each of these nuclei are chromosomes. Chromosomes are made up

of DNA, the double-stranded molecule that affects protein

programming in your entire body, including how you look, how you act, how you process

certain types of food, and how your muscles and your response to fitness works. So let's take a

look at how some of these different enzymes that we can find in your saliva could affect your fitness.

So one enzyme is called ACE, A-C-E, or angiotensin converting enzyme.

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