The Story Encoded in Your Genes
[Music]
i’d like to tell you about an
adventure story it’s actually your
adventure story that’s in
your genes this is an extraordinary
story
and it’s one that unfolds over the
course of your life
to give you what you want
you know your genes really represent
part of your book of life your book of
life is actually encoded
in 23 chapters half of each chapter
written by your biological mother the
other half by our biological
father we call those the 23 pairs of
chromosomes
within those chromosomes resides
thousands of stories and those stories
are your genes
but they’re not all read simultaneously
because if they were you’d be a mess
whether they’re read selectively and
that’s called genetic expression
and what you’re going to learn is this
adventure story which is in your book of
life can be
anything you want it to be it can be a
book
of adventure that is associated with
empathic
passionate extraordinary experiences or
can be a book that’s encoded and it’s
associated with tragedy and disturbance
and
inflammation all of those messages all
those stories
are encoded within your book of life the
question is
which of those are going to be expressed
you know when i was young through my 74
years of living now
i recognize in reflection that my sister
and i were kind of
influenced by a concept that my father
used to tell us
that his parents had died at a young age
and so he expected to die at a young age
so-called genetic determinism there’s
nothing he could really do about it
it’s the bad luck of the draw and so my
sister and i grew up with that concept
of genetic determinism that
how we would grow older and our
health as we grew older would be
determined almost exclusively by our
genetic inheritance
that’s fallacious the 21st century model
has entirely thrown over that concept of
genetic determination
now we recognize only about 30 percent
of our health is actually
locked directly into our genes the other
70
of our health is determined by what
messages we send to our genes what we
wash over our genes in terms of
experience
in terms of our environment in terms of
our lifestyle and the selections that we
make
this unfolds and opens up the chance for
our journey
our adventure story to be that which we
want it to be
and not a journey that’s associated with
premature disease
and in fact one of the things that we’ve
learned is that the food that we eat
is actually information that speaks to
our genes isn’t that hard to believe
food is information for our genes but
yes that’s actually been found and it
opens up a field
that’s only about 20 years old called
nutrigenomics
how food and its principles the protein
carbohydrate fats vitamins minerals
of the phytonutrients that are in our
plant foods all regulate
and experience their effects on our
genes that regulate our function
wow what a powerful concept so how do we
know this
well one way we know it is by studying
identical twins because when identical
twins are born as you know
they have identical genes and as a
consequence you would expect as they
grow older then they should have
identical
health outcomes if in fact all of our
health is determined by our genes
but that’s not the case unless those
identical twins lived in the same
environment ate the same foods
live the same lifestyle had the same
experiences what you will find
in the research that have been done on
thousands of pairs of identical twins
over the last 20 years
is that over time their health diverges
it differs one from the other it differs
because there are different experiences
that are washing over the genes that
create different genetic expression
that then make them look at and feel
differently
and in fact that is then something
that’s above the genes that’s called
epigenomics or epigenetics above the
genes something that’s
creating a different outcome from our
genes now the great example of that are
the pima indians
now really there is a there’s two kind
of groups of pima indians they’re the
north american pima indians that live in
the southwest of the united states
generally
on the reservation in arizona and then
there are the
northern mexican pimas now they’re
genetically
virtually identical however their
outcomes in terms of their health are
vastly different
it was noticed by the indian health
services and the
bureau of indian affairs a number of
years ago that diabetes was increasing
dramatically in the pima indians such
that by the time they become
40 years of age or older almost 50
percent of them have
some form of diabetes you have kidney
problems you have neurological problems
you have problems with the eyes and this
is where you actually go if you want to
study diabetes is in this population and
so people started to say
they have diabetic genes diabetic genes
because they get such frequent diabetes
but yet if you look at the same genetics
that are in the mexican
pm indians you’ll find that not 50
percent of them or more
are diabetic but less than 5 percent of
them are diabetic it’s very infrequent
and the difference has not to do with
her genes it has to do with their
lifestyles once we started
giving the pemas in north america white
sugar white flour
white fat alcohol in abundance
the diets of too much of too little over
consumptive under nutrition
they started showing the problems of
obesity and diabetes
the genes were actually warrior genes
the genes were actually there to protect
them
from the historic greater risk they had
which was starvation
and so what’s been found is they have
thrifty genes that hold on to calories
very tightly
but if you feed them these diets that
are so rich in high calorie low nutrient
foods now you suddenly produce a problem
so do we really have bad genes
and the answer is no really we have
unique genes
unique genes that define our unique
relationship with the environment even
those genes that we’re worried a little
bit about like
apoe4 and alzheimer’s or the brca genes
with regard to breast and ovarian cancer
or prostate cancer in men
these genes which a lot of people don’t
even want to know if they have these
genes
being expressed these mutant genes
really can inform us
as to how we might best lead our lives
if we do have those genes
we might want to know not to eat a lot
of saturated fat stay away from
inflammatory foods get more exercise
maintain our body weight properly
because the data says
that if you know that information about
your genes and you do those right things
in your lifestyle
you can greatly reduce the expression of
those genes
into those diseases that we’re so
worried about even breast and ovarian
cancer
this came from work of mary claire king
a number of years ago the woman who
discovered
the bracha one and two genes so this
concept of genetic determinism
is really fallacious we have tremendous
opportunities to create our own outcome
even in those cases of what we call the
genetic
diseases of infancy diseases like
sickle cell anemia down syndrome
phenylketonuria
these are very serious diseases they’re
called monogenetic diseases
because they’re controlled by a single
gene and a lot of people said
well that’s nothing there’s nothing you
can do about them but now we recognize
over the last 20 years of research
that their expression also can be
modified
there can be very mild cases of down
syndrome there can be
hardly any adverse effects of
phenylketonuria if the
infant is put on the right kind of diet
that’s phenylalanine amino acid
restricted
and it doesn’t then impair their
neurological development
these are the extraordinary new
developments that we’re saying that
genes are not bad or good
genes define our uniqueness
and our opportunities to learn our
uniqueness and then modify our lifestyle
our diet and environment in such a way
to maximize our adventure story to be
all that we want it to be
so let me go back to my father remember
i told you he was kind of a genetic
determinist
my sister and i were imprinted with that
concept so when he got into his 70s he
started to have some health problems
he was adversely affecting his life my
mother and he were unable to do the kind
of things they’d love to do
even with his greatest love which was
his computer he was no longer able to
get onto it and do the programming that
he so
loved and so it was it was a very tragic
situation
so um my mother called me says so jeff
is there anything we can do for your
father and i said well
er this is early on in genetic testing i
said so well let’s have his genes tested
to see what they look like and when we
did it
we found out that he had a unique
genetic characteristic
producing very high levels of
homocysteine and amino acid in his body
and when we measure that in the blood
low and behold it was high
but we know what to do with that
particular condition once we got that
genetic information we know
by giving them higher doses of vitamin
b12 and vitamin b6 and folic acid
that we can modify the way folic acid
then in b6 and b12 affects
the appearance of homocysteine in his
body and lo and behold
it worked my mother calls me one morning
and she is just
excited as can be exalted it says jeff
i’m so excited this morning for the
first time in two years your father
walked in
the bedroom fully dressed ready to go
and saying let’s go on a picnic today
and for the next four years my father
had a high
functioning life he got back on his
computer he got back into independent
living
and it was like a miracle it wasn’t a
miracle
it was understanding his genes and need
that led him
into the appropriate approach toward
itself that is an
extraordinary adventure story that we
might call miraculous
but by understanding our genetic
heritage and
understanding the treasures that it
encodes we can do
magic things in our outcome and make our
life that which we want it to be
so if i was to then kind of encapsulate
all of this into a single take away what
does it really mean to us
number one have your genes analyzed
don’t be fearful of what they’ll say
you should be empowered by recognizing
that those are unique facets
of your inheritance the most important
thing you’ll ever own
you are like no other organism that’s
ever been made before nor will again
you’re unique identify then the
strengths in your genes
don’t worry about those weaknesses worry
about the things that actually
give you greater resilience greater
flexibility greater opportunity to
maximize your potential and then from
that
create a future that maximizes your
genetic gifts
in so doing your life will be a true
adventure story
of a century or more high level living
thanks so much for listening
[Music]
you