There has been a lot of excitement recently about epigenetics, the study of the molecular processes that regulate our genes. Although DNA sequences do not change, alterations on genes can change the way DNA is read and expressed. These alterations occur as a result of interactions with the environment. Chemical markers on the genome show which parts of DNA turn on and off not only as the result of disease progression, but also in response to changes in stress, diet, exposure to toxins, and other external factors. To date, scientists have found epigenetic changes associated with cancers, depression, addiction, and more. There is even research indicating that epigenetic marks can be passed from one generation to the next.
While people may have certain genetic dispositions toward a variety of health risks, it is actually our environment that pulls the trigger. It should come as no surprise that lifestyle, state of mind, and diet can essentially instruct our genome to regulate disease-related genes. Despite the lack of acknowledgement by the cancer establishment, for example, there is a significant body of scientific research indicating that cancer is caused largely by environmental variables. The notion that cancer is actually an epigenetic disease is in stark contrast to mainstream medicine’s view that it is a genetic disease brought on by DNA mutations within the cell. The epigenetic theory is backed by numerous studies carried out around the world that strongly suggest that genetic mutations associated with cancer development occur after a cell has been transformed by physiological stressors such as chemicals and ionizing radiation.
Dr. Dawson Church, founder of the National Institute for Integrative Healthcare in California, and author of The Genie in Your Genes: Epigenetic Medicine, provides some background. “The dominant way of understanding genetic activity in modern medicine has been genetic determinism,” he says. “It’s in my genes. I have this gene and therefore I’m highly likely to get this disease. This association between genes and disease has been one of the foundations of science for the last seventy years. This has been regarded as the cornerstone of the way our cells work and our bodies work, and yet it’s completely not true.
“There are certain genes that are fixed and those are genes for things like eye color and hair color. My eyes are gray. They’ll never be blue. They’ll never be brown. So those genes are fixed, but they only represent about 15 percent of the genome. The other 85 percent of the genome is being expressed in collaboration with factors not just from outside the cell, but often from outside the body. Often something happens totally outside of our bodies and our bodies translate those external events into internal molecular messengers, which literally switch genes on and off. So, yes, you might have a gene but in the vast majority of cases, it is in fact being affected from outside the genome.”
With epigenetics, we are able to see scientifically how lifestyle changes, yoga, meditation, and exercise affect the expression of thousands of genes. “A fascinating study was actually published just last week on this,” Dr. Church says. “It showed the effect of listening to a piece of soothing music for 20 minutes. They found that up to 97 genes changed their configuration when you just listened to a piece of music. Some of those genes have to do with inflammation and some with immunity. So there was this beneficial shift in gene expression just as a result of listening to music.”
Science is proving the holistic effects of natural therapies. “Our bodies are a whole and they are not a collection of parts,” Dr. Church says. “A drug company aims to find the magic bullet that will affect one molecule that will shut a gene down or turn it on. Holism is exactly the opposite. When you, meditate, do EFT [Emotional Freedom Technique, a self-help method that combines cognitive therapy, exposure therapy, and acupressure], HeartMath [which emphasizes the heart-brain connection], or mindful thinking, what’s happening isn’t just that you’re affecting one molecule, or synthesizing one protein. You aren’t just affecting the expression of one gene. You’re affecting the expression of many genes throughout your body. Our minds, our bodies, our spiritual lives, all of these things are having a dramatic impact on which genes are expressed.”
The scientific community performing epigenetic research tends to focus on the role of the environment on gene alterations contributing to disease, but most of this research is looking at environmental toxins that surround us constantly and are found in our food and in our products at home. For example, in 2015 the World Health Organization condemned Monsanto’s weed-killer Roundup (glyphosate) for its serious health risks. While toxins are important, they are by no means acting alone.
“I don’t want to discount the effect of mechanical changes to the genes brought about by things like environmental toxins,” Dr. Church says. “There is a very real concern about those, but we human beings are remarkably resilient creatures. If you look at the whole sweep of evolutionary biology you will see that, as a species, we have been able to survive enormous climate changes, social changes, and technological changes, and this is going back hundreds of thousands of years. I believe that we underrate how strong we are and how capable we are of surviving challenges. I think people worry a whole lot about things like nutritional influences, environmental toxins, and so on, and they don’t realize that their stress level is often affecting them dramatically more than those potential threats to their health. Your stress level has a huge effect.”
Dr. Church describes recent scientific investigations relating to stress. “In an astonishing piece of research I describe in The Genie in Your Genes, receptors for adrenaline were found on the surface of cancer cells. So you have high adrenaline, high cortisol, and high levels of your stress hormones, and you’re literally feeding the cancer. If you’re a woman at risk of any of these kinds of inherited diseases, your stress level is literally going to contribute to the sustenance and the triggering of those cancer cells. If you do all you can to reduce your stress, then you can be having this holistic overall effect on your health. Again, I’m not saying to discount environmental toxins, and by all means pay attention to nutrition, but your stress level is your huge lever. This lever can be affecting the expression of thousands of genes at a time, and it’s the big leverage you have over your health.”
Convincing scientific evidence supports the idea that consciousness can be an important factor of regenerating and repairing DNA. Dr. Church tells how times have changed in the past thirty years. “If we had gone to a medical conference in the early ’80s and proposed that consciousness—your thinking and world view, your beliefs, your view of the universe—that all of these things affected the genome, we would have been tarred and feathered and thrown out, and they would have thought we were totally ridiculous. But now we have these tools like these gene chips, like these DNA microarrays that actually measure gene expression, and we’re discovering that consciousness has profound effects on the genome. Again, not just on one or two genes but on cancer genes, inflammation genes, immunity.”
Dr. Church tells about one of his exciting projects in this area, a triple-blind, randomized, controlled study published in the oldest psychiatric journal in America. “We analyzed the cortisol levels of people who got EFT, who got talk therapy, and who got rest. Three groups and one session each—just one session each—and we found that cortisol dropped dramatically in the EFT group. We found that anxiety and depression dropped twice as much in the EFT group as the other two groups, and that there was a correlation between the reduction in anxiety and depression, and the reduction in cortisol.”
These findings are significant because they show that as people change their thoughts, beliefs, and world view, and reduce stress, anxiety, and depression, they are actually changing the expression of the genes that code for cortisol. “The result is that much less cortisol is being made,” Dr. Church says. “The positive side effect of that, too, is that the two precursors for cortisol are the main precursors for DHEA. DHEA is your main cell repair and youthening hormone. As you down-regulate those cortisol genes, you up-regulate your DHEA genes. Automatically, you’re having a rise in DHEA as you’re having a drop in cortisol, and that was from just one session.”
Although certain genes carry high risks for cancer and other diseases, caution is urged in how we respond. The actress Angelina Jolie had a double mastectomy and removal of her ovaries after learning that a mutation in the BRCA1 gene gave her an 87 percent risk of developing breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer. She determined that this was the right course of action in her particular case and correctly implores other women to get advice and consider all of their options before making any of their own decisions. In a New York Times commentary in March 2015, she stated, “A positive BRCA test does not mean a leap to surgery. . . . There is more than one way to deal with any health issue. The most important thing is to learn about the options and choose what is right for you personally.”
This case raises an urgent question regarding invasive surgery as a preventative medical procedure due to certain genes associated with disease. This risk model used is a mathematical model that does not take into account if we changed the circumstances of our lives. Change our diets. Change our attitude. Change our exercise. Change our stress levels. There are so many options. For more discussion on this topic, see chapter 24.