Much of the current research on treating disease and staying healthy has focused on our genetic makeup – from the Human Genome project, completed in 2003, to the newer field of epigenetics, which puts our 23,000 genes into the context of the chemical reactions that influence their activities. Though these are crucial areas of study, scientists are continually forced to confront how much human health is not dependent on our genetics.
The original optimism about the potential of genetics has been dampened by the immense challenges of translating gene findings into drug discovery as well as a gross underestimation of the role of lifestyle on disease risk. Geneticists did not –and many still do not – fully appreciate the dynamic manner in which our genes interact with each other and our lifestyles, down to the level of our cells, eavesdropping on activities everywhere in the body and responding, often instantaneously, to a person’s experiences.
Whereas the genes you were born with will never change during your lifetime (except in a few cells here and there), the activity of those genes – generating hundreds of thousands of complex proteins inside the cell – is extremely fluid and responsive to what you are experiencing every day, from the food you eat to the daily concerns that are causing you emotional stress. The human body is like an orchestra of genetic players; streams of “notes” enter and leave all 100tn cells in the body, and the determination as to whether the melodies go up or down, increase or decrease in volume and blend or clash with one another can be traced to chemical modifications of our DNA and the protein sheath that surrounds and cushions the double helix.
Specific genetic-guided treatments hold much promise, but they pale in the face of the realization that everyday life choices are altering gene activity all the time. Lifestyle choices can have profound genetic effects on health and risk for disease. These are summarized in our upcoming book, Super Genes (November, 2015).
A clutch of studies, for example, points to the major effect that meditation has on genetic activity. We have observed in our own intervention trials employing meditation that hundreds of genes and proteins are positively influenced, including telomerase, a protein widely believed to hold an important key to the aging process. Moreover, these beneficial effects were not observed only among lifelong dedicated meditators. One study we helped conduct with the Self-Directed Biological Transformation Initiative observed results in new meditators within a few days of starting the practice. These exciting new findings are currently being prepared for submission to peer-reviewed medical journals.
So what kind of lifestyle would your genes want you to maintain? Most of the individual recommendations fall in line with a standard model of healthy living, such as moderate weight, regular exercise, good sleep and a balanced diet. But two other things are new and hold enormous promise. The first is to prioritize your lifestyle choices in order to take advantage of what has the most benefit. Based on studies of rodents, diet, exercise and stress reduction head the list of activities that directly affect your gene activity, for better or for worse.
Second, genes and their biological interactions can be traced much farther back in time than anyone previously suspected. Late-life disorders like most cancers, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease are now thought to begin with epigenetic changes early in life, perhaps as early as childhood. In medicine, what comes earliest is usually easiest to treat, as opposed to the full-blown disorder. Therefore, treating cancer and Alzheimer’s through simpler, earlier interventions prior to symptoms could be the answer everyone has been searching for.
The promise of stopping all major diseases based on simply decoding the DNA of our genes may have fallen short, but the new prospects for understanding how to adapt our lifestyles to promote gene activity that is more salutary may go a long way to fill the gap – let’s hope so.