What is Epigenetics

Most of us have been taught that our destiny is largely determined by our genes. It’s true that there are certain aspects of our physiological makeup that are not likely to change overnight, such as the color of our eyes or the structure of our bones. However, a newly emerging branch of science known as “epigenetics” has now proven that we have more control over our genetic expression than we previously thought, because certain aspects of our genetic programming are now understood to be switched off or on by a variety of environmental factors. The beauty of this new discovery is its suggestion that by making different environmental shifts, we may be able to change which of our genes are expressed at any given time. Our genes no longer have to dictate our future. In this provocative new video from IPEtv, Marc David, founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, explains why we no longer have to think of our DNA as an unchangeable plan for our future. Tune in and learn how you can start to take charge of your genetic expression and set yourself up for better health!

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Here is a transcript of this week’s video:

Greetings, friends. I’m Marc David, founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. Let’s talk about what is epigenetics.

Wow, my friends. This is some good news. There is an absolute Renaissance that is literally changing the landscape of health and medicine as we know it. It is the indisputable research that has turned the field of genetics upside down. And it’s all about this new field of epigenetics, which is not so new, but it’s really coming to the forefront now.

So here’s the deal: simply put epigenetics means above and beyond genetics. And it embraces it. It’s all about how certain genes are turned on and off by environmental factors, such as nutrition, supplements, stress, relaxation, sunlight, specific foods, specific herbs, meditation, exercise, anger. And the research continues to explode.

So everything I just mentioned, there is research that shows that when these factors come into play, they change gene expression. Researchers have identified some amazingly specific factors that directly impact genes that are connected to poverty, to trauma, to abuse, to being an orphan, to bullying, or the stressful experiences that your grandparents had will be impacting you. This is wild!

Genetic switches can literally be turned on and off within minutes.

This has been measured. They can be turned on and off within minutes on exposure to such environmental triggers. And this constant dance, it’s an interplay between our life and the air and the sun and the moon and the stars and everything that’s impacting us.

So, in other words, people have been thinking for years, “Well, it’s genetics. I have brown eyes. And genetics is eternal. I’m brown eyes forever.” Well, yeah, there’s certain things that genetics holds will be consistent for you throughout your life. Here’s your maleness or here’s your femaleness or here’s your brown eyes or here’s how tall you are.

But genetics is much bigger than that. It’s a constantly changing, evolving experience. Genetics loads the gun. But environment—meaning epigenetics—pulls the trigger. So, in other words, the epigenome, all these factors that are impacting us, they’re talking to your DNA.

When you eat food, it is literally talking to your DNA.

When you meditate and put yourself in a certain brain state, that state is literally talking to your DNA and telling it to turn on and off different genetic switches that encode for alcoholism, that encode for depression, that encode for cancer, that encode for heart disease or breast cancer. The list goes on.

So the beautiful thing is epigenetics actually puts the responsibility back on us. So gone are the days where we believed that if you have the gene for alcoholism, for example, you will surely become an alcoholic. That’s nonsense. And it’s not true.

Gone are the days where if you have a gene, let’s take, for breast cancer, that means you will surely have this affliction and you have to start cutting out their body parts in advance. That’s a form of insanity, my friends, because its environment. It’s all the energies. It’s the food. It’s how you are doing your life, the substances that you ingest, the pollution, the health of the world around you that is determining what’s happening in your body: diet, lifestyle, stress, all of it. These are the beautiful ways that life is communicating to your DNA every single moment.

So please to not believe that if somebody tells you, “You have the gene for this, that, or the other thing,” that you are destined to live in a diseased world. The onus is on us to start to do the things that we know work and to treat the body like it’s sacred and to start seeing the world as this beautiful, magical dance between what’s going on inside of us here and what’s going on outside of us there.

Because when we begin to create a healthier world, healthier diet, healthier way of being with each other, that talks to the very cells in our body. And it tells us, it tells your cells, it tells your DNA to be the best that it can possibly be in your metabolism, in your health, in your longevity.

And that, my friends, is the absolute magic of the world.

Warmly,
Marc David