Genetics vs Lifestyle and why lifestyle is MORE important.

Recently I've had reason to think long and hard about genetics and the role it plays in disease.  It would appear in talking with people that the general consensus is that if you have a gene for something that it is inevitable that you are going to have that problem at some point in your life.  This is absurd and has been refuted by modern science but the message is just not getting through.  The truth is that genetics is simply a predisposition, NOT a guarantee that you will develop that problem.

People have been taught that the dna (genes) in your body runs the show.  In Bruce Liptons book The Biology of Belief he illusrates how flawed this is.  The sad part is science has known this for years but continues to by and large ignore data that doesn't suit its purposes.

The common, incorrect belief, goes something like this.  Our dna runs the show and it determines what our bodies are going to do and when they are going to do it.  In essence the belief is that the dna is the "brain" of the cell. 

We all know that our actual brain is running the show in our bodies and that if we lose brain function that is brain death and the end of the game we call life.  This is a physical law with respect to our bodies.  With this fact in mind lets look at dna.  If dna is running the show shouldn't a cell die if it is removed from one of our cells?

Bruce Lipton did this wonderful experiment and removed the nucleus and dna from a cell.  Guess what?  That's right, the cell didn't die, it kept on ticking along just fine.  How can this be?

It turns out that the dna of the cell is NOT the brain of the cell, it is the reproduction of the cell.  The cell didn't die right away and kept functioning just fine for quite some time because it knew what to do.  What the cell couldn't do however was fix any parts that broke down or wore out so it did die after some time, but not because of flawed dna. 

The genetics (dna) of the cell has nothing to do with determining when a disease is going to be switched on.  There is no "brain" inside it determining when to switch on.  What does determine this is environmental stimulation.  This is a field entitled epigenetics and is a subject I dare say most medical doctors are still not familiar with .

Think of the 88 keys on a piano keyboard as being your genes.  They represent your choices in life and are what we could call your life song.  They are all there, some good notes, some bad. 

Let's say the C# represents one of the genes that "causes" breast cancer.  Remember, as you live your life this is equivalent to playing the 88 keys.  Smoking might be the C# and drinking might be a B flat.   The examples are unimportant but the concept is critical.  If you live your life and play your song never hitting the C#, which in our example would be the key to ACTIVATE the gene for cancer then you WILL NOT DEVELOP THE DISEASE even though you have the gene for it!  This is so important to understand as it means you are not a victim of bad genes and you have some control via your lifestyle.  It is our lifestyle and diet that is pathological NOT the gene.  If the person in our example hadn't smoked they wouldn't have developed cancer. 

The downside is we often don't know exactly what will trigger off certain genes but you can bet stress of the physical, emotional and chemical types will do this, and this is what Nutritional Balancing is all about.

When you live a lifestyle as optimal as possible you minimize your chances of developing so called genetic diseases.  By using a hair tissue analysis to rebuild you bodies chemistry to ideal levels you minimize your risk.  By getting folic acid levels up you also minimize your risk as this acts to muffle genes from being expressed.  We all have genes for wings and scales but you don't see them expressed as they are muffled.

So the next time someone blames bad genes stop and reassess.  Is it the gene or the lifestyle?  Chances are unless you are in the 5% of  people that can literally claim genetic disease you can bet it is your pathological lifestyle.   The good news is that if your lifestyle got you here, then changing your lifestyle and nutrition can get you out.  Start with assessing and then intelligently putting together the right program for your health with Nutritional Balancing.