Do Your Genes Determine Your Destiny?

It's one of the fundamental tenets of functional medicine, which is that your genes.

Interact with your environment to create who.

You are at any moment.

And when you say environment, I mean.

Food, exercise, stress, relationships, connection, love, meaning, everything.

Right.

All those things are things that we have control over.

While it is true that your genes.

Can predispose you to many health challenges.

Predisposition is not the same as predestined. We do not need to be rendered powerless by our family history of disease.

Hi, I'm Kasia Perowietz, one of the producers of the Doctors pharmacy podcast. In two recent interviews, Dr. Hyman and.

His guests spoke about epigenetics and how our behavior can influence which of our.

Genes are turned on or off.

Let's listen in as Dr. Hyman talks with leading expert in Alzheimer's and dementia.

Research, Dr. Marwan Sabbah. So epigenetics is a fairly new field. It's very exciting. And the idea is that we can say that to things like diet, exercise, lifestyle, stress, lack of sleep that you're turning genes on and off. And that we want to, in many cases, turn genes off, but in some cases we want to turn genes on and that would alter our health.

Yeah, and it's so possible. I mean, food is one of the.

Most important and prevalent things that we.

Are connected to every day that alter our gene expression. And this is one of the fundamental ideas of functional medicine. So you eat broccoli, it tastes good, but it also upregulates genes that increase glutathione, which helps you detoxify and helps the liver work better.

Yes.

Right.

And you have green tea catechins, but those upregulate genes that increase your ability to get rid of heavy metals. So, there's incredible research on these components in food that have these biological effects on our genes. You know, people think that you go.

To the doctor, they're gonna fix you.

But the truth is 80% of your health is determined by what you do, not what the doctor does.

That is correct. The idea that people said in your remarks is that what you're genetic profile that you're born with, it's like your fate in life, right? And people are starting to challenge that idea. And really think about it, can I take a genetic risk for Alzheimer's and create a life program that offsets that genetic risk? So if I'm genetically prone to getting Alzheimer's, can I create an intervention program that would buffer or mitigate or offset that risk, and that's the questions about it.

And we think like precision health or precision medicine.

Precision health is a great example of that. And that's a really critical point because if that's true in Alzheimer's, we could try that across the board, right? In diabetes, heart disease, cancer, all those disease states could respond in a, maybe not in the same paradigm, but in a similar paradigm to alter those risks as well.

Dr. Hyman further explored this topic with medical anthropologist and psychologist Alberto Villoldo in their conversation about powerful energy fields within all of us.

But for us, for our health, we not only have to eat well and drink clean water and sleep well and exercise, but also upgrade the information in the field, which is going to modify your genetic expression.

Well, I find it fascinating that someone has come to this work through working with spirit and energy and ancient traditions that helped to activate the healing response in the body or can do the opposite, that you've come to understand that our physical vessel the body that we inhabit has to be a fertile soil for us to be able to access that energetic field. But most of us have kind of issues with our body, both our physical body and our spiritual body. And they're both connected. And what you're saying is that your spiritual life, your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions controls your DNA in a way that changes the expression of it. For good or bad?

Eat health or disease?

Health or disease. I think that is the biggest challenge for people because people can change their diet, they can add more broccoli, they can stop eating gluten, but changing your thoughts, that's a big one.

Changing your belief systems is really important.

Changing your belief systems are what drive your thoughts. And that drives your behavior, which drives all the consequences of your life and who you are. So people are used to therapy, to coaching, to certain meditation practices to help deal with these things. What you're talking about is a different way of handling it that's based on ancient wisdom, shamanic healing. Can you kind of break it down a little bit? Because I'm really curious about how you apply it, how it works with people, and how do you start to release those emotions and those toxic things.

Part of what we help people do is to write a new story for themselves. A new story about their health, a new story about their relationships, that person that really hurt you, that made your life miserable, that abused you, how do you find what the lesson was for you and practice forgiveness? So forgiveness is really key and this is an act of power that you make. I choose to forgive you. And the next step is to practice gratitude. You can detox the body, but if you don't detox the emotions at the same time, you're gonna retox. So wherever you find physical toxins, there are also emotional toxins, terrible relationships, people you're still angry with, you haven't forgiven, this emotional baggage that's extraordinary. And if you don't get rid of that, you're gonna go back to repeating the same old stories and running your family.

Yeah, it's often, I think Carolyn Myss said it, biography gets written in your biology.

Absolutely.

So, your life story literally will regulate your genes, your mitochondria, your gut flora, your immune system. Everything is regulated by your biography, your beliefs, your thoughts, your attitudes, and this lineage that you come from. What's fascinating is the analogy you use, which I love, is you can upgrade your software. your energy software, your biological software. And when you have old operating systems, they have bugs, they get clunky, they get garbage in them. It happened to me with my computer. I literally had to reinstall everything fresh because I had all this old clunky operating systems from software that was screwing up my whole computer. And I literally just got rid of all that and it was like I grew a new computer. And I think what you're talking about in human biology is this ability to unlock through our DNA, through our diet, through our ways of dealing with stress, through regulating sleep, through regulating our gut microbiome, through using certain nutrients, through using certain foods and these phytochemicals that upregulate these ancient pathways that we can actually literally activate the cleanup system. So literally get rid of all the old crap and bring in a new set of operating systems that is a new body that literally will help you to reverse the aging clock and increase your vitality at any age, really.

Health is multifaceted and needs to be cared for on many levels for true wellness to occur. Just as we need to upgrade the software on our computer if we want it to run smoothly, we need to also improve our energetic health if we want to change the course of our internal software, such as redirecting our genetic predisposition. How we live, the quality of our relationships, the food we eat, how we use our bodies, and the environment that washes over us determines much more than our genes ever will. By taking control and empowering ourselves to transform our own health, we are able to feel whole, connected, and truly alive in body, mind, and spirit. Focus on taking small steps to optimize your health. They add up to have big effects on our own vibrance and vitality and our society at large.

I hope you enjoyed this mini episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy. Thanks for tuning in. Hi everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their Find a Practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed.

Healthcare practitioner, and can help you make.

Changes, especially when it comes to your health.