Ever since the discovery of DNA, science and medicine have been obsessed with genes. Many people – including most doctors – believe that genes determine your physical and mental health and longevity. But the exciting new science of epigenetics is proving these genetic determinists wrong.
Your ‘bad genes’ can be turned off, and your ‘good genes’ turned on, by eating healthy food, getting regular exercise, and even thinking more positive thoughts and feeling uplifting emotions such as joy, gratitude and appreciation. Your daily choices determine whether you will enjoy ‘peace and long life’… or not!
Genetic determinism is the belief that our genes control our biology. Sir Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA – the substance that stores our genetic ‘blueprint’ – called it the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology. He believed that DNA was its own ‘boss’, and the boss of the whole body: it controlled its own replication and served as the blueprint for all the body’s proteins.
Whenever you hear a journalist breathlessly describing how researchers have “found the gene” for this, that or the other disease, characteristic or personality trait, they’re speaking the language of genetic determinism. But there’s a slight problem with this notion that our genes decide what diseases we’ll get, how long we’ll live and even how happy we’ll be. It’s dead wrong.
Complex body, simple genome
When the Human Genome Project began in the late 1980s, researchers expected to find at least 120 000 genes. It was believed at that stage that each gene coded for a single protein. The human body is made up of about 100 000 proteins, and the scientists figured we’d need another 20 000 or so genes to regulate the enormously complex task of protein assembly.
Given the complexity of human beings, we would surely have many more genes than the ‘lesser’ animals whose genomes had already been mapped.
It turned out, however, that the human genome contains just under 24 000 genes – only 1500 more than the primitive, microscopic Caenorhabditis worm.
The human body comprises between 50 and 75 trillion cells, with an enormously complex brain capable of creating literature and art, ferreting out the secrets of the Universe, and even understanding a few of the lyrics sung by James Reyne (apologies to the over-65s and under-30s who have no idea what I’m talking about).
The Caenorhabditis worm, on the other hand, has exactly 969 cells, 302 of which are in its very simple brain.
So how do we account for human complexity, when our genome is relatively simple? It all comes down to epigenetics, the science of how environmental signals control the activity of genes. These environmental signals – including nutritional components, toxins, social rituals, stress and emotions – modify the activity of genes without changing their ‘blueprint’.
Thanks to the influence of these epigenetic factors, at least 2000 different proteins can be generated from a single gene ‘blueprint’! Furthermore, these epigenetic modifications can be passed on to your children, just as your genetic blueprint is passed on via DNA.
A real-life experiment in epigenetics
Dr Dean Ornish is a medical doctor who rose to prominence in the 1990s for proving that a low-fat, plant-based diet; regular exercise and social and emotional support reverses atherosclerosis (blocked coronary arteries) after just one year (1).
More recently, he has turned his attention to prostate cancer. In his Prostate Cancer Lifestyle Trial, he found that a very similar program of diet and lifestyle changes slowed down or stopped the progression of the disease in men with early-stage prostate cancer. He and his team found that this comprehensive program modified the activity of over 500 genes, many of them involved in the growth and spread of cancer (2).
So what do this mean to you?
- When you eat unprocessed plant foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds and whole grains, genes that detoxify cancer-causing chemicals, and repair damaged tissues in your joints, arteries and other tissues become activated.
- When you eat animal proteins (including dairy foods), genes that cause your liver to make cholesterol, and increase the growth and spread of cancer, become activated.
- When you exercise, you activate genes that preserve your ability to maintain a healthy blood sugar level.
- When sedentary lifestyle and poor dietary choices cause you to gain weight, your excess fat tissue pours out chemicals which activate genes that cause your insulin to stop working, so you may develop type 2 diabetes.
- When you meditate, help others, or feel uplifted by beautiful music or the beauty of nature, you activate genes that repair damaged cells, strengthen your neural connections so your memory works better, and enhance your immune system’s function.
- When you fume with anger and hostility at your partner, boss or children, you switch on genes that cause inflammatory chemicals to flood your body, preventing the repair of damaged tissues.
Every day you make choices – what you eat, how much physical activity you get, what you think and feel – that affect the expression of your genes. Make good choices, and you’ll ‘live long and prosper’, as Mr Spock would say. Make poor choices, and you’ll degenerate and die prematurely.
Of course, knowing this is not enough for most people to make the changes they need to make. Old, bad habits need to be broken before we can make healthy choices. That’s why I wrote ‘The 5 Steps to Breaking Bad Habits’, available FREE when you sign up to my free weekly e-newsletter, EMPOWERED!
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