Kshipra was very worried. Her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and her aunt was also in cancer remission. She believed that she would also get cancer in the coming years as revealed by genetic testing. She asked me whether anything could be done by her to postpone the inevitable.
People generally tend to blame their bad genes for their current or future health status. It provides them a false satisfaction to continue with a bad lifestyle. Many of the chronic illnesses including Obesity, Cardiovascular disorders, Cancer, Diabetes etc might be influenced by the genetic makeup of the person but that is not the major contributor as a causitive factor. Scientists have discovered that it is the environment which determines Gene Expression. This field is called EPIGENETICS.
Epigenetics:
Epigenetics literally means “above” or “on top of” genetics. It refers to external modifications to DNA that turn genes “on” or “off.” These modifications do not change the DNA sequence, but instead, they affect how cells “read” genes. Genetic predisposition is only a part of what goes into creating most diseases today, and it is usually not the largest part. It is estimated that in most diseases, genetics only contributes about 10% toward actual disease expression and progression. The other 90% is contributed by your “exposome,” which Dr. Christopher Wild says “encompasses life-course environmental exposures (including all lifestyle factors), from the prenatal period onwards.”
Epigenetics is best explained by studying Identical twins.
Identical twins are said to be genetic carbon copies of one another. And yet, over time, these identical twins shift and change so that their physical expression often becomes distinct. In other words, we can more easily tell one from the other. While it is the genes that provide the instructions for the development of the body, it is the epigenome that interacts with the DNA to provide what might be considered a second set of instructions.
This explains why one identical twin develops cancer and the other remains healthy when they have identical DNA OR why does one twin become obese while the other remains lean.
Factors Impacting Gene Expression:
People are often told that nothing is in their hands and we are what we are born with. But Epigenetics clearly proves them wrong. The factors that influence epigenetics are the following
- Nutrition
- Stress
- Exercise
- Sleep
- Relaxation
The majority of people will develop the modern diseases only in the presence of a combination of environmental exposures, each being a unique combination. Lifestyle, diet, environment, gut flora, sleep, stress, and mental outlook play the largest role in genetic expression of most chronic disease states. You need to consider your internal and external environment in addition to your genetic predisposition to understand more fully your health.
Bottomline:
Its time to drive home the message, Health in our hands. We do not manifest disease merely by a defective gene, but by your epigenome. In other words, whether or not we develop disease is determined by how our genome is being directed to express itself. There are also “master genes” that can switch on and off clusters of other genes.
It means we are not doomed by bad genes.
Epigenetic therapy, which is essentially the curing of disease by epigenetic manipulation, involves changing the instructions to our cells — reactivating desirable genes and deactivating undesirable ones. This may be the future of medicine.
We should always remind ourselves in most cases, Genes can only load the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger.
Like the last line summarising the concept