You can change your genes. Really.

Have you been told by your doctor that you have a health condition because of bad luck or bad genes?

If so, I have good news for you. Your lifestyle, and what you put on your plate, possibly matter more. So if something 'runs in your family', that does not mean your fate is sealed. 

Your health destiny is in your hands and NOT 100% dictated by your genes, contrary to what doctors may tell you. Studies have now shown that only 10-30% of cancers can be attributed to genes – which leaves the other 70-90% being caused by lifestyle factors.

Our DNA is inherited and cannot change, but did you know that you can influence which part of your DNA is active and expressed? This is called EPIGENTICS. 

Genes are like recipes. Most seasoned cooks don’t follow recipes to the T, and likewise, our bodies don’t have to follow instructions given by our genes fully. The imprint is there, but our genes are interacting with our environment constantly and reacting to messages from the environment to protect us.

You may have heard the phrase, food is information. What that means is, every bite of food you eat sends information to your genes and affect whether certain genes are activated or silenced. In addition, your environment is information. The toxins you breathe in, the stress you are experiencing, the sleep deprivation etc are ALL interacting with your genes. 

For example, even if you did inherit the BRCA gene known to be associated with breast cancer, you can still reduce your chances of getting breast cancer with lifestyle measures. Only 5-10% of breast cancer is thought to be hereditary.

Similarly, studies have shown that prostate cancer genes can be altered through diet and lifestyle intervention.

It doesn’t stop at cancer. Back in 1998, Dean Ornish showed that the No 1 killer of the developed world, heart disease, can be reversed through intensive diet and lifestyle changes.

You are probably asking, well if this is true, and there is data dating back from 1998 how come doctors don’t talk about it?

It’s simple – lifestyle changes don’t make money. Pharmaceutical drugs do. So much of what you hear, and what your doctor practices, particularly in the US, is shaped by what they can bill to the insurance company. Big Pharma (the giant pharmaceutical companies) have revolving doors with the FDA and our government, meaning many policies are also shaped by money - and not our best interest. 

To quote a former Harvard Professor of medicine and Editor in Chief for the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr Arnold Seymour Relman.

“The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful.”

One of the reasons why I experienced physician burnout as a family doctor in the UK was that I experienced an overwhelming sense of helplessness as a doctor. 80% of my workload was dealing with chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, which had large root causes in our diet ad lifestyle - yet the solutions I provided for my patients were pills. I was essentially using pills to treat lifestyle diseases. When I made this realization, I wanted to talk to my patients about what they were eating, stress reduction, sleep - and all the pillars of health I now write about. However, I only had 10 minutes with each patient. There was no way I could. 

Day in day out, I saw the same patients with chronic diseases coming in with different problems, and I just added more and more to their laundry list of medications, often prescribing medications to counter the side effects I had caused. After years of practice, it no longer felt right to me. I began to dread going to work, because I no longer believed I was helping my patients the best way I could. 

Take a typical patient with diabetes. When they are initially diagnosed, I might send them to my nurse to offer 'dietary advice' and inevitably, they will proceed to needing medications from me sooner or later because the 'dietary advice' received was basic and usually not practiced. When they come to me, I'd offer them one medication. After a few years, it becomes 2-3 medications, plus one to reduce their blood pressure, another to reduce their cholesterol, and then a few years after that insulin injection – which made them gain weight, which meant their diabetes worsened, which meant more insulin, which meant more weight gain. We have more expensive, fancy medications now to treat diabetes but why are we not addressing the root causes? 

You might be shocked to hear that, depending on where they are in their disease journey, people have reversed chronic disease like diabetes, hypertension, even MS… 

I have coached many clients (including my own farther and husband) in using lifestyle strategies (e.g. nutrition, exercise, meditation) to improve their overall health and come off medications.

For me, THIS is being a doctor. I entered the medical profession wanting to help people, and after losing myself and my purpose for a while, I finally regained my WHY and my passion in life.

In my opinion, the key to health is to remove the blocks, provide the right conditions/terrains, and let the body heal itself. Our bodies have an amazing ability to repair itself. Conventional medicine absolutely has a place - it can offer life-saving medications and surgery, however it should not be the ONLY strategy to tackle chronic diseases which are large lifestyle/diet elements. 

So, what are the key factors that can change our genetic expression (epi-genetics)?

- Nutrition - the food we eat can upregulate/downregulate genetic expression. 

- Stress - this is a big silent killer, in my opinion

- Exercise - if we could bottle the benefit of exercise into a pill, we'd be billionaires.

- Sleep - sleep is when our bodies repair and heal. Most people are not getting enough restorative deep sleep. 

- Environmental toxins - Sadly, we now have 80,000 chemicals in use, most of which have no human safety data. The EU is much stricter in allowing chemicals into common daily use items like personal care, and have banned 1300+ chemicals whereas the US has only banned 13. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the products we use in our homes are all sources of toxicants that can damage our DNA, mitochondria, mess with our hormones like insulin and thyroid, affect our fertility - and more. This is a big passion area of mine because not enough doctors are talking about it yet. 

For more tips on these big pillars, be sure to subscribe so you can access my archive of articles all about these lifestyle pillars, how to reduce toxins and help your body detoxify.