With the power of nature and our epigenetics, why can’t our bodies adjust and keep us healthy? Nature takes millions of years to adjust to changes. Normally changes come slowly. When they o come fast they wipe out a major part of a species and those left need to adjust rapidly or go extinct. Both scenarios occur all the time. We are making changes to our bodies and environment at a very rapid degree. Our epigenetics tries to adjust but some of the changes cause conditions that can not be overcome! Take a diet that turns ON cancer genes and turns OFF tumor fighting genes. This makes it near impossible to fight the disease.
We have changed our environment in so many ways:
Global warming
Processed foods
Not enough consumption of plants
Stressful lives
Negative thinking and beliefs
Little or no exercise
This causes our bodies to be overwhelmed to the extent that our bodies become ill. All of these things are choices we all have. Make the right choice and you have a higher probability of health and extended life. Make the wrong ones and that probability drops rapidly. What choices do you make on the above items? How is your healthy? How many medications are you on? Choose wisely.
Epigenetics is the basis of who we are. It plays the human symphony on our genes. In addition it makes each of us unique. It is what causes both health and sickness depending on the environment it is playing in. In my book, “Food for Thought – An Epigenetic Guide to Wellness”, I discuss the various things that affect our epigenetics:
Exercise
Stress
Diet
How we think (positive or negative)
What we believe
The book is available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com as hard cover, paper back or eBook. Each of us should make an effort to exercise more . Walking is a great exercise. It does;t have to be super hard exercise to benefit you. Lower the stress in our lives by not worrying about the things we can’t change and changing what we can. We all need to change our diet. SAD (Standard American Diet) is NOT working. We eat too many fatty, fried and sugary and salty foods. Be determined to eat more vegetables. Cut back on animal protein consumption (eggs, meat, milk and cheese). Eat less salt and sugar (substitute fruit instead). Train yourself to be a positive thinker. Surround yourself with other positive thinkers. Believe in yourself. YOU CAN DO IT! YOU MUST DO IT, if you want to remain healthy. Stop reading about it, stop thinking about it and DO IT! It’s your life and only you are responsible for it.
If our bodies are so smart and are programming each cell based on our environment, why are so many people getting sick? It’s because we are changing the environment so drastically in such a short period of time. Never before has our bodies had to deal with such drastic change. It is over powering. This causes disease and a failure of the cells in general. When the failure is massive, it causes death!
Think of how we have changed our environment in the last 100 years. We are eating much more animal protein and much less plant protean. Er are eating pesticides and preservatives because our food is packaged and not fresh. Our air is not clean and the ozone layer is emitting more harmful rays. As i this wasn’t enough, we are in a constant state of stress. Money, jobs, family, health; it all leads to a very stressful life style.
Stress, poor nutrients, chemicals and harmful rays cause massive epigenetic changes to our cells. In many cases it’s more than they can handle. This failure to handle the changes is called disease. What is interesting is we have a choice! We can eat differently, buy less processed foods, live a less stressful life, be happy with who we are and what we have. The choice is yours. Health or disease? What do you choose?
Friday, I posted a very important video from Dr. Lipton on how our cells are intelligent. They communicate with each other, reproduce, respond to stimuli, take in nutrients and get rid of waste. He discussed the fact that the nucleus with our DNA was NOT the brain of the cell but a database of blueprints to build things needed by the cells. The brain was external to the cell, the environment. It stimulates our cells in good and bad ways. Nutrients cause the cells to move toward the nutrients while toxins cause the cell to move away. Genes are turned ON/OFF by different stimuli from the environment. Cancer genes gets turned ON (epigenetics) because of things in our environment like poor diet & exercise, toxins and negative thinking. We are creatures made up of all the living cells in our bodies. They are trying to react to the various stimuli in our environment. Sometimes this causes a break down in control; resulting in disease. Sometimes our bodies overcome negativity and take in positive thinking and good nutrients and survives disease free.
We are amazing creatures designed to evolve with our planet. We are changing all the time but it takes time for the cells to catch up to major environmental changes. In the last few hundred years we have increased toxins, poor nutrients, introduction of toxins in our food supply and stress in our lives. All of this is overwhelming our cells. This causes diseases like cancer, heart disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, dementia, COPD and many other chronic diseases. Many times these diseases lead to premature death.
You can reverse this by changing your lifestyle! Eat better (non processed whole organic foods and less animal products), exercise more, think more positive and lower the stress on yourself. For more information see my book “Food for Thought”!
Belief actually switches on genes in our body that makes life changes! Dr. Lipton says knowledge is power. Lack of knowledge results in lack of power. Our genes do NOT control our lives. They don’t cause cancer or disease in our bodies. We cause disease in what we eat and what we believe! Dr. Lipton shows that the nucleus of our cells (which contain the genes) are not the command center of the cell as previously thought. He has removed the nucleus from cells and they continue to function normally. If you remove the brain from any living thing it dies! So the nucleus can not be in control of the cell.
We are a machine built of proteins. The proteins change shape (move) based on signals in our bodies. Movement is a basis of life! Our behavior is movement of a protein by a signal. The brain of the cell is the collection of signals acting on the cell. These signals cause changes or work within the cell. The nucleus is simply the repository of blue prints to build new cell parts. The environment (sound, sunshine, heat, food, thought, hormones, etc) cause the cells to do different things. If we cut off the environment the cell will have nothing to do. This is known as perception.
Genes associated with cancer need to be activated by the environment! The environment caused the cancer NOT THE GENE! Genes do not gives us cancer or disease. Perception (the environment does! Change your perception and you can change your cancer or disease. You are in control!What signal in your life activated a gene that was inactive for 35 years and gave you cancer?
Conventional biology textbooks have said that DNA goes to RNA which builds proteins that do things. In this view DNA is in control! But it is wrong! The Environment sends a protein signal to DNA that allows it to be read into RNA which builds the proteins that do things in our cells. So the environment controls our cells! This is known as epigenetics!
The environment can also change your genes called adaptive mutation. If you enter a stressful environment and don’t have the genes to deal with it, we modify our genes! If you place yourself in stressful environments all the time, your genes are re-written to adapt to stress. This can cause negative things to happen in your body. Move yourself out of the stress and you return to normal genes.
Cells are either in growth (positive) or in protection (negative). They can not be in both at the same time. If you are always in protection mode you are not growing and diseases will occur. Stress cuts off our immune system (it’s not needed if we are being chased by a lion). The strongest growth influence is not nutrients but LOVE!
I write this BLOG on health and how the science of epigenetics affects all of us. I have written a book on epigenetics and how everyday items like diet, positive/negative thinking, beliefs, environment and attitude can affect our health and well-being. It is called Food for Thought – An Epigenetic Guide to Wellness. It appears that we are NOT hard-wired by our DNA but have a “software” like system above the hardware called epigenetics. Epigenetics “expresses” or turns ON our genes. It can also block or turn OFF certain genes. The effect of these changes can be health or sickness.
My background is Physics and Math in college. I then spent most of my career in the computer business. I have a strong scientific and computer background. I was a public speaker for Microsoft as a Regional Director in charge of New York City. This allowed me to speak to as many as 2,000 participants at a conference on the latest and greatest in computing. I see epigenetics more from a computer point of view than do most scientists. This is an advantage given the current understanding of this subject.
I have always had a healthy interest in why things happen and what influences them. Biology of the body and DNA always was an interest to me. I became fascinated by the fact that this DNA somehow made each of us and created our intelligent brains. Scientists began to determine that there just wasn’t enough DNA to do the job. I began to see it like a computer. Computers have a relatively few simple instructions that when arranged in different orders produce all the programs in the world. They range from Windows to word processors to spreadsheets to digital programs to corporate programs and on and on.
What in our bodies was like software sitting on top of the hardware instructions? This fascinated me for years. Then I read an article about epigenetics and it became clear that epigenetics sits on top of DNA like software sits on top of hardware. It was the missing link that allows simple instructions to be arranged in infinite ways to creat complex outcomes. I began to read everything I could on epigenetics and a hundred plus books later and some online doctorial courses later, I have some knowledge of this subject.
We are about to enter a new age of better understanding how our bodies work. We will also gain knowledge on what affects our bodies both in good and bad ways. The field of epigenetics coupled with nutrigenomics has promising potential to link diet to illnesses. It will be a long hard up hill road but the results will be well worth the wait.
I would love your comments, ideas and thoughts on this subject. Biologists and epigenetists please comment on the technology and science of epigenetics. Thanks for reading my BLOG!
Our DNA is like a computer’s hardware and epigenetics like its software. The environment (food, thinking and physical environment) is like data to the software. In a computer system the software uses the hardware instructions to accomplish its goals. It reads data and acts upon it to complete the original programmer’s ideas. In our bodies epigenetics uses the DNA instructions (genes) to accomplish its goals. The environmental conditions are data that causes the epigenetics to meet nature’s goals.
Our DNA is like a musical instrument and epigenetics is like the musician. The sheet music is like our environment. A musician reads the music and uses his or her skills to play the instrument (hardware). In our bodies epigenetics uses environmental conditions to play our DNA. Just like some musicians may play well and others may play badly; our environment causes our epigenetics to either play well or poorly.
How can we tell what changes are good or bad for us?
“You’ll enjoy this book. I gave Scott George’s book and he loved it. gave it to Nancy who’s been reading it. she wants to buy it because she likes it so much and wants to undeline certain passages. She was at our lawyer’s yesterday and was reading it. Our company lawyer was familiar with the book. how about that?” -Ray
“I want to say thank you for opening my eyes. I’ve been stubborn about what I eat. During my vacation, I finished your book. WOW!! You’ve opened my eyes wide. Just wanted to let you know – I am listening………..” – Kar
“August 2011 I was surprisingly diagnosed with MS. I am 41 years old with an active 3 1/2 year old son, I was afraid to go to sleep for many nights fearing that when I woke up I would not be able to walk. I cried day in and day out. I did not understand why this had happened to me. A very good friend gave me the book her brother wrote “Food for Thought”. I pray and talk to God just about every day and let him know how thankful I am that my family and son are healthy and that my MS is not worse than it is. I do know there are many people worse off than me but I waited a long time for my son and now I feel bad that I can not run and play with him like he wants me to and how I want to. So much of what I have read makes a lot of sense and has made me change the way I eat, I won’t lie not 100% yet. But I ordered a HealthMaster mixer and started to juice a lot of green leafy vegetables and fruit, which in the past I never ate. I have cut down on my sugar and milk intake. I try to think positive and tell my body that the MS must leave and that my body needs to use the new food I am giving it to change what is happening. I will be honest this part has not been easy for me but with good friends and family to lean on I am getting by. I don’t know if all of this will work but I do know that I have now read other books along the same line and eating fruits and vegetables have worked for other people, so I am going to do what ever I can to help rid my body of this awful disease. I am very thankful to my friend Kathy and her brother George, they helped me take my first step toward a healthier life not only for me but for my son.” -Dawn
“‘Genes simply respond to data coming from our environment.’ ~ pg. 42, ‘Food for Thought’ is a very interesting book that deals with the issue of preventing disease instead of just treating disease. Most doctors won’t tell how to avoid illness, they only treat the symptoms – most times not even curing the disease. George J. Febish and Jo Anne Oxley believe the right course is to eat a vegetarian diet. They also encourage the reader to stay positive, be forgiving and to make lifestyle changes that will lead to a healthier life. Getting cancer, being obese, having heart problems and getting diabetes does not have to be in your future. The authors give tips and tools for changing your way of thinking, therefore changing your life. If you loved biology in school that will help you while reading this book since then you will be able to visualize what the authors are saying. This book also discusses Nutrigenomics and Epigenetics.” -The Rebecca Review
“This is a must read if you are serious about making positive changes to promote a healthy lifestyle.”
American health is getting worse and people believe getting
old equates to getting ill. That is absolutely not true! You are empowered to
be as healthy as you can be. You DO NOT have good or bad genes. The problem is
that genes are being turned ON or OFF which causes health or illness. What
turns our genes on and off? How can we control these switches? These are the
main topics of this book.
Two new fields of biology, and how they impact the quality
of your life, are explored in the book. Epigenetics
is the study of how our genes are switched on and off. For example, cancer
genes can either be turned on or off and tumor fighting genes can be turned on
or off. Nutrigenomics is the study
of how different foods cause epigenetic switches to our genes. It is a mapping
of which foods switch on or off which genes.
The state of your health is not random nor is it luck. It is
the sum of all the decisions you make in life. It includes which foods you eat
and don’t eat, how you think, what you believe in as well as the physical
environment you live in. Learn how you can control these life changing switches
to improve your health, lifestyle and mental attitude. Each of us is
responsible for our own health. Our doctors and government are not responsible.
Make the right decisions and live a better life. The choice is yours!
My book, Food for Thought, explains how we have evolved into the creatures we are today. How our cells work together to form the human we are. It explains how epigenetics“fires” our DNA, turning genes ON or OFF. Sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes it is not. When it’s not a good thing, we get sick. epigenetics is a relatively new science. Every university is studying it now. The larger universities have epigenetic departments. What parts of our environment “fire” these genes is a major ongoing study. We know it is the food we eat, how we think and believe, the stress in our lives and exercise. Nutrigenomics is the study of which foods cause which epigenetic changes. This is an even newer science and still in its infancy.
The book is targeted to the average person on the street and is easy to read and understand. The book is available online at Barnes & Noble and Amazon in Hard and soft covers as well as eBook. Let me know what you think.
Food For Thought – An Epigenetic Guide to Wellness
georgefebish
The Epigenetics Project Blog 