Change Your Genes Destiny?
Change Your Genes, Change Your Destiny
Who controls your DNA? Epigenetics does.
Turns out, we do not have to be helpless victims of our genes.
Though we think about our genes mostly in terms of the traits we pass on to our children, they are actually very active in our lives every day, regulating how various cells in our bodies behave.
Reading our Map
Scientists who completed the mapping of the human genome in March 2000 identified about 25,000 genes that contain the genetic code for all of us.
On top of that though, there is actually another layer of complexity.
The ‘epigenome’ is a modifiable chemical code within a cell’s genetic material.
A chemical code that can influence the expression of that gene.
The science of epigenetics provides a way we can tinker with our DNA and essentially bend it to our will!
Look out preventable chronic diseases! The age of epigenetics has arrived…
Cooking with Fire!
Our genetic material is often compared to a book. However, it is not so much like a novel to be read all in one go, but rather like a cookbook.
The cell reads only those recipes which are to be cooked at that moment.
In this sense, the recipes are the genes; ‘reading’ a recipe in the book of the cell means creating RNA copies of individual genes, which will then be translated into proteins.
This technical mumbo jumbo is just saying that when a gene is activated or switched on – when the recipe is read – the gene carries out it’s function – the recipe is cooked.
The cell uses highly complicated regulatory mechanisms to make sure that not all genes are read at the same time. (We wouldn’t want to start a food fight).
Just as genes provide the codes for producing proteins, various chemicals called epigenetic marks sit atop genes and offer basic instructions to them, telling them to switch on or off – essentially opening or closing your cook book on different recipes.
The biological term for this is epigenetic gene regulation.
The science of epigenetics rewrites the rules of disease, heredity, and identity.
Nature and Nurture work so closely together.
A Recipe for Health
Basically, (taking the analogy of the cook book one step further) you may have a genetic recipe in your DNA for some terrible, tasteless dish.
This dish may have been passed down through generations to you. Your mother may have cooked this dish, just as her mother did before her.
Once you know that this hereditary dish is grossly unpalatable and the recipe is to blame, you can make a decision to NOT to cook that dish.
Skip that recipe!
Or at least, not cook it as often.
Especially if that dish is a poor detoxification gene variant, or a gene variant that links to inflammation and heart disease… you get the picture.
You can switch off or dial down the effect of your unfavourable genes with ‘epigenetic influences’ – things like certain nutrients, herbs, exercises, diet, and even thought processes!
Switched On is a brilliant book written by Christine Houghton, a nutritional biochemist with over 30 years experience.
The book shows you simple ways to harness the power of ‘nutrigenomics’ – how food interacts with your genes.
Nutrigenomics is like a sister discipline to epigenetics.
If you know that your most valuable asset is good health, then this is the book for you.
How to Get Inside Intelligence
Personal genetic profiling ensures a better understanding of one’s own physical capabilities, allowing for more targeted and specific interventions to be designed and implemented, ensuring each individual’s goals match their own genetics.
Why take this supplement or follow that diet when YOUR genes need a different set of nutrients to turn on or off? It doesn’t make sense.
Find out what lifestyle, diet and supplements specifically benefit YOU and your genes and you have effectively tailored your life and radically changed your health potential.
More and more, researchers are finding that an extra bit of a vitamin, a brief exposure to a toxin, even an added dose of mothering can tweak the epigenome (and thereby alter the software of our genes) in ways that affect an individual’s body and brain for life.
Randy Jirtle a professor of radiation oncology at Duke University says, “Epigenetics is proving we have some responsibility for the integrity of our genome”.
“Before, genes predetermined outcomes. Now everything we do – everything we eat or smoke – can affect our gene expression and that of future generations. Epigenetics introduces the concept of free will into our idea of genetics.”
We can have a targeted influence on our health.
What does this mean for you?
It means that YOU are the caretaker of your genetic roadmap.
Now we know there are things we can do to change our genetics and therefore our health, we need to remember that this goes both ways!
You can improve your genetic expression or you can damage it.
The implications of this are also much more far reached then we originally thought.
For many years, we were secure in our knowledge that no matter what we did to damage ourselves in terms of poor lifestyle choices, it only affected us.
Our children therefore would be born with a genetic clean slate. Right?
Nope. Now we know that this is not true and epigenetic changes can be passed down through generations.
Each of us has a much greater genetic responsibility than we ever imagined.
Epigenetics is the study of how external factors influence gene expression – turning genes on or off with the potential to contribute to numerous health conditions.
You can learn the environmental, dietary and lifestyle factors that influence gene expression, and how to protect yourself from genetic damage that can affect your health and that of your children and grandchildren.