Are genes our health destiny?
It might seem like that is true, but in fact it is only partly true, thank goodness.
Now that we can perform DNA testing on a person’s entire genome we are finding many different gene snippets, or SNP’s that correlate with different diseases. Everything from cancers to diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and ALS.
It is very easy to take away the message that our genes are our health fate. But, what is often left out of the news headlines about genetics is the concept that our genes don’t act by themselves. To make it even more complex, many different genes can simultaneously interact to influence development of a particular disease.
But genes are not our destiny all by themselves. There is something called epigenetics. That is, how our environment influences how our genes behave. That can include the external environment we are exposed to, or our internal environment, such as what we eat.
That’s actually a relief. Despite our family history, it means we have some control over how our genetic predisposition plays out.
Consider this powerful example. Some researchers discovered the gene that allows caterpillars to turn into moths. They wanted to see if what the caterpillars ate altered how the gene behaved. So, they fed some of the caterpillars regular food and some of them different food. Those that ate normal caterpillar food turned into normal moths. The ones that ate different food turned into moths with deformed mouths and couldn’t eat right, so they died.
The type of food they ate altered how their genes behaved. The researchers didn’t change the genes themselves. They changed the environment that the genes were exposed to. Epigenetics.
Sometimes the changes can be very subtle and take years to really show up. That’s why preventive environmental and lifestyle changes are so important.
Looking at the big picture of how we live, what’s in our air, food and water, and what we eat is one of the simplest and most profound things we can do to achieve and maintain wellness. Not just lack of illness, but wellness.
Our ability to deal with environmental toxins has something to do with individual genetics as well. The enzymes that we use to cope with or “detoxify” toxins, both natural and man-made, are also determined by our genes. There are many different detoxification enzymes. They can be more or less efficient, or sometimes, totally absent, depending on our genetics. So, we vary genetically in our ability to detoxify various substances, from person to person. We can test for some of these enzymes to see what types of toxins we might be particularly susceptible to, or what types of nutrients might help that detoxification pathway work more efficiently.
One thing is for sure. Health and wellness is a more complex mater than simply genetic inheritance. There are steps we can all take for ourselves and our families to help our genes work the best that they can…so that we can stay healthy.