How Epigenetics Works And Can Improve Your Health
Transcriber: Jana Sremanakova
Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
I really like this picture.
It tells me a lot about you,
about me, about humanity.
And if you understand its meaning
it can change your life.
It can slow down your biological clock.
You could provide the best possible start
for your children’s health
prior to conception,
and in particular, you could
improve your own health,
which is what we are
going to explore now.
I once heard if you want to know
how you may eventually die,
you should look at
what your ancestors died of.
It scared me to think about it this way
because one of my closest relatives,
my grandma, died from colorectal cancer.
Does it mean that I die from cancer?
What about you, what is your prediction
based on your ancestors?
I was 15 years old
when my grandma was diagnosed.
That time, I had no clue
what was going on.
My grandma was born same day as me,
and we used to spend a lot of time
together - we were best friends.
And I remember one day cooking
vegetable soup for my grandma
for the first time in my whole life
when mum left me with grandma
on my own one afternoon.
And then couple of days later, I found
myself standing by the door of her room
looking into her eyes and saying goodbye,
knowing that I will never see her again.
It was painful, as it always is
when you lose some who you really love.
And I was the kid who always asked why.
And I couldn’t comprehend
how a strong woman like my grandma
could turn to skin and bones
so rapidly within few months,
not being able to even get
out of her bed, and then suddenly be gone.
So I had a need to understand it,
so I studied.
I did my biology degree, then genetics
and molecular biology degree.
During my studies,
I worked with cancer cells
that I blamed for killing my grandma.
And over that period of time,
I came across research
that completely changed the way
I looked at health and diseases.
Science kind of programmed us
to think about our DNA,
which is good because now most people know
that they have DNA, that they have genes.
But at the same time, we learnt to blame
our genes for most of our health problems.
I often hear people say,
‘’This my family history''
or ‘‘This is because of my genes,’’
almost resigned in the fact
that it’s something inevitable,
something we cannot change.
But are we telling the whole story?
Let me show you how our genes represent
just one chapter of the story,
and there is another chapter
that you all write for yourself.
Professor Sandy Tubeuf
from the University of Leeds
conducted research
with 21,000 people over age 50.
And what they did, they looked at
lifestyle and health of these people,
and lifestyle and longevity
of their parents.
And one of the main finding was
that lifestyle of parents at the time
these people were 10 years old
explained 31 to 78%
of their adulthood health.
And these researchers showed
that when parents didn’t exercise,
these people didn’t exercise
when they grew up.
When parents were obese, the people
tended to be obese when they grew up.
When parents smoked, the people tended to
smoke when they grew up, and so on.
So it looks like we tend to follow
habits of our parents,
and then we end up
with very similar health.
In other words, we can say
that we learn to live in very similar
or same environment as our parents.
And this happened to Jane,
so I would like to tell you her story.
Jane was born as a relatively
healthy kid with working genes,
but her parents did not live
a particularly healthy lifestyle.
As Jane grew up, she adopted
habits of her parents.
Among these, Jane learnt to eat
mostly pre-cooked food and fast food.
She would often crave sweets
and food when she felt stressed
because her mother tended to give her
treats every time she was upset,
and she used food as a reward.
And just like her parents,
she didn’t do exercise regularly.
And although you might think that these
factors are not important and very small,
these were negative factors
in Jane’s environment
that were affecting her body
on daily basis
for a prolonged period of time - years.
And this environtment led Jane
to becoming obese in her thirties,
and being diagnosed
with type 2 diabetes in her forties.
But because Jane’s father
had type 2 diabetes,
Jane blamed her genes
and just accepted the situation.
And as time went by,
suddenly in late fifties,
Jane was diagnosed with breast cancer.
And this time Jane knew
that her aunt died from breast cancer,
and after testing, she realised
she had BRCA gene mutation,
mutation which is associated with
higher risk of developing breast cancer.
So this information gave Jane
understanding why she was diagnosed.
But then, something happened.
Jane came to learn that her neighbour
had been diagnosed with breast cancer,
but this lady didn’t have
BRCA gene mutation.
And when she went
to the hospital for a treatment,
she met identical twins
with identical genes.
And one of them was there
for breast cancer treatment,
while the other was completely healthy
and came to support her sister.
This made Jane think.
Could there be something else
other than her genes
that might be contributing
to her health problems?
And the answer is, yes.
And the answer might
not surprise you at all
because the answer is her own environment.
But that’s nothing new at all.
Because now we have
massive epidemiological evidence
on the link between
our environment and diseases.
Based on these studies, we know what
factors in our environment are negative
and are increasing our risk of diseases,
and we know what factors are positive
and are decreasing our risk of diseases.
So I think you all know
what you would advise Jane to do.
If Jane had better diet,
if she took up exercise, lost weight,
if she would reduce her stress levels,
she could significantly reduce
her risk of getting type 2 diabetes
despite her father’s diagnosis,
and also reduce her risk of breast cancer,
despite having BRCA gene mutation
and aunt who died from breast cancer.
But the question is, how does this work?
What do you actually do to your body
when you eat healthy,
when you move, when you exercise,
when you reduce stress levels?
Well, now we have a plausible
mechanism to explain
how such an innocent thing
as diet or exercise
can make a dramatic impact on our health.
So, let’s have a look at it.
Imagine yourself as a TV screen.
For a TV screen to work,
we need TV channels
and a remote control that can
turn on and off these TV channels.
And our bodies work like this too.
So for our body to work we need DNA.
And our DNA has actually two parts -
it has genes, which are TV channels,
but it has also a remote control,
which are regulatory parts of our DNA.
And even though in real life
it’s much more complicated,
it works on very similar principle.
By pressing buttons
on your remote control,
you can turn on your
channels - your genes.
But we cannot press
all the buttons all the time.
Some of these buttons are blocked.
The process of blocking
is called methylation -
when we add the methyl group, stop mark
on certain buttons on our remote control.
And when we have a stop mark there,
we cannot press the button,
so we do not turn on
our channel on our gene.
But this is good, because this is the way
how our body regulates
that in different type of cells,
we are turning on different channels.
And so, at this point,
you should understand
that our DNA contains not just genes,
but also the remote control.
And I would like you to remember
three things about your remote control.
First one, that initially,
how your remote control looked
and where you had placed your stop mark
was given to you before you were born,
while you were developing
in your mother’s womb.
And your mother had the biggest impact on
how your remote control was initially set.
But the second thing
I would also like you to remember
is that at the present moment,
your remote control
doesn’t look completely the same.
We have now amazing studies with twins,
especially from researchers such as
Dr Fraga or Dr Segal and many others,
that we know that with time
our remote control can change.
What I mean by that ‘it can change’ -
we can add or remove stop marks
from our remote control,
and now we even understand
that as we age,
we gradually lose the stop marks
from our remote control.
And the third thing
I would like you to be aware of
is that people with diseases
such as cancer, cardiovascular
disease or type 2 diabetes
have remote controls
looking different than healthy people.
And what is different
about their remote control
is that they are missing stop marks
at some places where we need them,
and they have added stop marks
where we don’t want them to be.
And what we now start to understand is,
how this mess in our remote control
and where we have placed our stop marks
is happening before we manifest diseases
and how it is linked
with developing diseases.
And the question is,
why I am telling you all of this?
Why I’m bothering you
with all this molecular biology,
because the important
question to ask here is:
What is it that can change
how your remote control looks
and can change where
you have placed your stop marks?
Because that plays a crucial role in
what’s going wrong with your TV channels,
how you can turn them on,
and what’s happening
with your whole body TV screen.
And we have now solid evidence
from animal studies
and a growing number of human studies
that show that changes on our remote
control are triggered by our environment.
So exposure to nutrition, exercise,
stress, pollution, chemicals,
whatever you want to think about,
it all can change
how our remote control looks
and where we have placed stop marks.
And why is it that fascinating?
Because that means
the fingers on your remote control
is you own environment
you can choose for yourself.
And so when we come back
to Jane and her environment,
based on epidemiological evidence
we know what factors in our environment
are decreasing the risk of disease,
so we know what positive factors we would
advise Jane to include in her life.
But now we start to understand
what these positive factors can do,
that they can interact
with our remote control
and change where
we have placed our stop marks
and from some initial evidence
in human studies that we have,
what we could advise Jane to do.
So for instance, based on
Dr Zhang’s studies,
we know that if Jane did
26-30 minutes of exercise a day,
she could keep more stop marks
at the right places on her remote control
than when she would do
just 10 or less minutes exercise a day.
And also there are other studies
from the same research group
showing that diet
high in fruit and vegetables,
it also has this protective effect,
while a typical Western diet
doesn’t have this effect.
And we have studies
from Dr Huang, for example,
who shows that remote control
of people who are obese
looks different than the remote control
of people who have healthy weight.
And if Jane did lose weight
as it is shown in Dr Huang’s study,
she could make her remote control
look back as in a healthy person.
And lastly, just to mention the study
about prevention of breast cancer.
Based on Dr Bryan’s study,
if Jane would actively do exercise,
she could make her remote control -
she could protect her remote control
and prevent stop marks being added
intothose places on her remote control
that when they’re blocked, they contribute
to development of breast cancer.
But what is the initial thing,
very first thing Jane would have to do
to reduce her risk of diseases?
She would have to change habits
that she adopted from her parents
and followed for a prolonged
period of time.
So I would like to ask you:
What about you?
What habits of your parents do you follow?
What example are you setting
for the next generation?
How does it affect your remote control
and their remote control?
And even though there is nothing
as 100% risk reduction of diseases,
as you can see, it’s not all
just about our genes,
because our DNA contains not just genes,
but also this remote control.
And both, our genes with remote control,
work in a beautiful synchrony
with our environment.
And so you all have a choice.
You can choose your environment,
and by that you can influence your DNA.
Because you can influence your own remote
control, where are placed stop marks,
and this way you influence
your genes’ regulation.
And yes, for all those skeptics out there,
this research still has many gaps,
but researcher are still exploring.
But what researchers have already found
is a solid base upon which
we can start to act.
And apart from amazing opportunities
for earlier diagnostics
and new treatments that are already
researched in many world centres,
this information gives
even bigger justification
for why what we do
on daily basis matters so much,
why prevention is possible
and so important,
and also it provides the realisation
that we have more control over our body,
over our health, than we think we have.
And when we come back
to this beautiful illustration.
This illustration is called epigenetics.
And you just learnt its basics.
Epi means above.
Epigenetics is something
which is above genetics, above our genes,
which oversees how our genes work.
And this picture shows
that you are all creators,
and it’s not a metaphor.
You all have a capacity
to direct your health
because you all hold your remote control,
and you can choose
your ‘environment fingers’,
and by that you influence
your TV channels,
how they are turned on and ultimately
you influence your whole TV screen
and how it works.
Thank you so much.
(Applause) (Cheers)