{"id":332,"date":"2007-11-02T23:18:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-02T23:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2007\/11\/02\/332\/"},"modified":"2015-06-29T14:57:15","modified_gmt":"2015-06-29T19:57:15","slug":"332","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=332","title":{"rendered":"Epigenetics and Personal Fate"},"content":{"rendered":"

I finally caught up with epigenetics<\/a>, which is perhaps the newest and hottest area of theory and research in biology. My thanks for that go out to NOVA<\/a>, that interesting and occasionally-great science show on PBS. Until recently, scientists thought that human genes have the last word on how living things are designed and how they operate and respond to environmental challenges. Genes were looked at as the unchangeable \u201csoftware\u201d of life. But the evidence now shows that there is another layer of control involved, the layer of \u201cepigenetic\u201d chemistry. From what little I understand of it, the DNA and RNA processes that express our genetic design do indeed tell the body what to do and when to do it \u2013 on the micro level, anyway (you can\u2019t say that DNA controls your behavior, i.e. made you cranky today or made you eat that big piece of chocolate cake last night; even though some people try to). BUT, they sometimes get muted or shut down completely; or they get amplified, made to have more influence than the other local genes. That is what the epigenetic chemicals do.<\/p>\n

So, any one person with a particular genetic code is not locked into one exact type of body with a totally fixed set of chemical processes within. The most startling evidence for this involves fraternal twins, i.e. twins with the exact same DNA. The evidence now shows that although they usually do look alike, they don\u2019t always act alike. And the processes inside their bodies can also vary, especially if they\u2019ve been through different experiences. So one can have a tendency to get certain kinds of infections quite easily, while the other will fight those infections off. If you are a fan of \u201cself-healing\u201d lifestyles, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that what you eat and how you exercise and think and avoid toxic exposure can have effects on making the good DNA bits work and turning off the bad DNA bits. The bad news is that epigenetic changes take a long time to respond to environmental factors, and once they do, they stay around for a long time \u2013 even getting passed on to the next generation. So if your parents had bad life habits or were exposed to toxins over time, the negative effects on their genes could well have been passed on to you. (The good news in response is that with enough time, those bad effects might be reversed by a sustained level of healthy life-habits). <\/p>\n

Actually, I am going out on a limb somewhat here, as this is a new and complex area of science, which I have studied for a grand total of about 95 minutes or so. But I will make one conjecture here regarding the recent crop of studies regarding the effects of diet on preventing serious diseases like cancer. Basically, most of these studies indicate that healthy diets do nothing<\/a> to prevent cancer and other serious diseases. <\/p>\n

This seems rather curious, as earlier studies identified specific chemical pathways through with chemicals in broccoli, for example, could bolster the immune system and help kill mutant cells. Furthermore, on the other extreme of magnitude, away from individual cells and up to whole societies, studies show that nations and group of people with certain types of diet have lower rates of various cancers that are prevalent in the USA. But when you move into the middle level, i.e. 5 or 10 year studies on a mixed group of 500 or a thousand people, you lose the effect. My half-assed guess is that epigenetics have something to do with this. If your mix of genetics and epigenetics bias you towards colon cancer, then all the calcium and fiber and low-fat dieting in the world can\u2019t overcome that all at once. But with enough time, maybe the tides do turn. And it may be that one healthy-diet factor that was studied in isolation won\u2019t work in the absence of others. Perhaps a low-fat diet alone does not make up for the lack of micronutrients or an improper balance of omega acids or a dearth of fiber and antioxidents. <\/p>\n

Well, this is mostly conjecture and wishful thinking on my part. But the new epigenetic movement does seem to lend some support to the old common sense notion that every day of healthy living increases the chance that it is going to do some good. In future studies of eating habits and disease, I hope that the scientists involved will learn to control for the epigenetic starting points of the participants. People nowadays find enough excuses (or succumb too easily to advertising pressures by multi-national food service corporations like McDonalds and CocaCola) to eat and drink too much of the wrong stuff without the additional notion that “scientists say that it doesn\u2019t matter anyway”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finally caught up with epigenetics, which is perhaps the newest and hottest area of theory and research in biology. My thanks for that go out to NOVA, that interesting and occasionally-great science show on PBS. Until recently, scientists thought that human genes have the last word on how living things are designed and how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5523,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions\/5523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}