Have you ever wished you could go back in time and tell your younger self something? How great would it be if you could give some of the wisdom you got later in life back to the person you were so you could avoid mistakes that you are still living with? Such a wonderful idea, which of course could never happen. Time is a line going only one direction, and it began when the universe was created. Since everything in the universe is moving rapidly, if you could somehow reverse time, you would find yourself in the middle of space somewhere because the physical coordinates of where you were would be very different from where you are now. Time can go backwards in only one place: imagination. Time goes forward, and we live with our mistakes.
Right now counts forever
We can, however, send messages forward in time. As we do work and interact with people, we are putting our marks on the future. Mistakes we made in the past don’t go away, but we can change course and make a better future if we invest in that future. The effects of old mistakes can be lessened or reversed. We may even come to appreciate those mistakes which propel is to make better choices now. But what if you are trying to reverse the consequences of more than just your own actions? Have you considered that you are not the only person who has marked your life? What about your parents and even their parents? Are marks made that pass generationally?
Progressing to conservative
An insurance company ran a series of advertisements where people in mid-life suddenly realized they were acting just like their parents. “Progressive can’t save you from becoming your parents but we can protect your home and auto when you bundle with us.” For many of us, the last thing we expect to do when we get older is to act like our parents. We leave our families to make our own lives, thinking we can do better than they did. Then we face life’s struggles, maybe have a family of our own, and realize that our parents were pretty smart after all, as we find ourselves doing much of what they did. Physically, we may start to look like a parent or grandparent that we can still remember. Our parents marked us, not only in their behavior, but also in our genes.
Well, we are stuck with our genes, right? Certainly our DNA is set by our previous generations. But the genetic codes that are most important to us, that most affect our everyday living, are those codes which actually get expressed. Simply having codes that were passed down doesn’t mean that we have to act out those codes. We may become our parents, but we can be better versions of them if we act to cause the desirable codes to be utilized, because our cells pick their codes based upon environmental pressure that we provide — both physically and mentally. Both physical and mental pressures are essentially the same to the cells, as each can cause them to switch codes. This is the basis of what we call epigenetics, which is the ongoing, highly adaptive nature of our genetics. Epigenetic changes can be short term or long term, but even long-term changes can be changed again if the environmental pressures change. Again, those changes can be physical or mental.
“Germline transmission of epigenetic information requires that the epigenetic marks be first established in the germ cells of the parent generation, maintained through meiosis, then passed to the offspring.” This is a basic explanation given in a review article published in Neuropsychopharmacology, where researchers from the University of Zurich, Switzerland explored the epigenetic inheritance of disease risk. “Meiosis” refers to the process of the sexes splitting their chromosomes in the sperm or egg to contribute half of the DNA code to the offspring. The researchers are saying that an epigenetic marker, if it remains when passed to the sperm or egg, is then passed to the offspring. The article then explains that epigenetic changes in the parent, perhaps caused by toxic exposure or other physical stress, or the mental stress of the parent, could set a marker which the offspring picks up. That marker could become a disease risk for the offspring. If that marker is going to be removed and the effects of the stress reversed, that is now going to have to be accomplished by the offspring. The child is starting off with a detriment, but that detriment can be reversed. Epigenetics aren’t permanent, but they can last a lifetime if a counter-force doesn’t switch them off. If not switched off before the child grows to adulthood and has a family, that epigenetic mark is passed on (50/50 chance per child) to yet another generation.
Where do I begin?
Let’s start at the beginning. You might think that the first opportunity for stress to enter your life would be in early childhood, even right after birth. But you are alive and your cells are receiving signals right at conception. If your mother passes along physical or mental stress, your tiny body will react. We all have heard horror stories of pregnant mothers passing along chemical addictions to their unborn babies. This is a tragedy and the baby is in for a tough time. But any mental trauma will have significant impact on the developing baby as well. This has been researched: in a multigenerational study published in Scientific Reports, researchers from the University of Florida studied the fallout from a 1982 incident in Syria, where the government killed tens of thousands of its own citizens. Women who were pregnant at that time and survived gave birth to children who are mostly alive today, and some of them have had children. So this study took genetic samples of the mothers, their children and grandchildren where possible. They identified 21 epigenetic sites of the mothers’ genomes that had been modified during the trauma of the massacre. In the grandchildren they could still see 14 areas of the genomes that were modified two generations later. Finally they discovered “accelerated epigenetic aging” in the children who had been in their mother’s womb during the violence.
The more extreme the traumatic stress, whether chemical or mental, the more that a developing baby experiences will produce epigenetic marks. Also the duration of the stress increases the likelihood of marks. What happens then to the children so marked? The study suggests that they will be more prone to disease and accelerated aging. Why would that be?
We are built to handle stress by a short term “fight or flight” response. That response involves ramping up the body’s metabolism to handle a threat at the expense of normal metabolism. It’s like opening up all the apps on your phone and playing loud music, which causes the battery to drain a lot faster. If this happens for a short time, no problem. But a period of civil war such as in Syria is not a short-term stress. Drug addiction is rarely short term. A lifestyle of poor eating, major stress on the job or at home, or generally unhealthy habits is not short term. These may cause epigenetic changes in the father or mother which then may pass to the child. If the child is in the womb during stress, the effect is multiplied because the baby is being directly impacted by the stress while effectively being part of the mother’s body. Now the baby is born, and the effects of early childhood trauma will also have epigenetic impacts. By the time the child reaches adulthood, he or she is likely well marked by numerous events.
You are likely so marred by your past. You can’t go back and fix that. And there would be little value in even pointing this out to you if you could do nothing about it. But even the most indelible epigenetic marks are still epigenetic, meaning that they can change. Just like bad stress, whether it be from a previous generation or during your lifetime, caused those epigenetic changes, so “good stress” can also change them. The core genetics are unchanged. Epigenetics, by definition, is changeable.
Time to change
If your parents lived a poor lifestyle and developed chronic diseases when older, you might be concerned that you also would develop those diseases. But those conditions probably happened due to epigenetics. Even if they didn’t, and your parents had some “bad genes”, your epigenetic responses may never need to express those codes. You can work on your lifestyle and give your body everything that it needs physically to be healthy. If you do so, you are giving yourself a wonderful gift. But how about what is unknown and invisible to you? You may not know what trauma happened to your parents, what you experienced while in the womb, and even in very early childhood. Those marks are buried where you cannot consciously detect them. Most of your thoughts are subconscious anyway, and you are therefore unaware of them. Besides the physical issues, you also have to deal with those thoughts if you are to reverse all the harmful epigenetic markings you carry in your cells.
It’s time to break the chain reaction of stress that is happening generationally. It can stop with you. The harmful thoughts that you carry cannot just be wiped out, but they can be replaced. Positive thinking may replace them with nice thoughts, but after a while you may realize those thoughts are just illusions. The best thought replacement comes from solid truth which, even during hard times, you can hold onto. These thoughts will settle in your subconscious mind and pour life into your entire body. That is the key to full and vibrant health.
Dr. Nemec’s Review
Genetics versus Epigenetics
Genetics is the blueprint of your genes, how to direct the building of each and every cell, whereas epigenetics is a modification of the blueprint, depending on the environment the house is being built in. The house is the cell.
There are four different scenarios:
Bad genes, bad environment
Some of us, unfortunately, inherit genes that aren’t designed for longevity. You can see this in family lines when, for example, every male dies by 50 years old of heart disease. Now, if you combine this with poor diet, no exercise, little water consumption, and constant sleep deprivation, along with the mental-emotional stress of a shaky marriage, a tremendously high-pressure job, financial pressures, and severe illness of a family member — this is the double negative. There is no investment in this future; instead it is living by chance.
Good genes, bad environment
We all have heard these stories: a person that lives to 100, smokes, drinks, doesn’t exercise at all, but yet for some reason, has a resilience or strong genetic make up. The problem with this category is that over the generations we have chemicalized the world around us, and to add to that we have made it an electromagnetic frequency disaster, so from power lines to wireless technology to cell phones, we are bombarded with not only tremendous amount of chemicals but also unprecedented electromagnetic pollution that prior generations were never exposed to. The generations get weaker as time goes on genetically just because of the negative epigenetic changes in their genes.
Bad genes good environment
This is the game changer for people that have parents and siblings that all end up with certain diseases at certain ages, like the man whose grandfather died of a heart attack when he was 50, and whose father also died of a heart attack when he was 50. But the a grandson decides early in life that he loves to exercise, to be extremely fit, and keep his weight in perfect range. He’s very healthy. He eats a lot of anti-inflammatory plant food, and no sugars or carbs. He gets to bed by 8 p.m. because he’s trained himself to be an early riser to exercise in the gym. This grandson also loves his job has a wonderful wife and two beautiful children that he adores. When you ask this man how is his life, his response is “wonderful!”
These situations have been documented where the grandson lives into his 90s because of his lifestyle — he was able to epigenetically tag his bad genes with such good lifestyle and good stress, and he completely rewrote the outcome of his genes. This is very impressive and gives hope to all. None of us are a product of our genes alone, and if we were and we could do nothing about it we would’ve died early in life.
In good genes, good environment
Now let’s take the example of the grandson that we just spoke about, and imagine his grandfather and his father living to 95 years old and not taking care of themselves at all — doing every lifestyle related activity that would counter longevity, yet they still live to be 95. So the grandson clearly has longevity genes, and on top of that he makes a tremendously positive epigenetic environment around those longevity genes. Now this is when we can thrive when we are 105 and beyond.
Where do I begin?
With Seven Basic Steps to Total Health. This is the first-step user guide to working on your diet and lifestyle. At Revolution Health & Fitness we’ve been teaching the Seven Basic Steps to Total Health for over 40 years to thousands of patients. These steps have helped so many.
Nutritional genetic testing
This is analyzing your genome: when this is done we read over 4000 genes, and because of the expertise over 40 years, we know which genes are most problematic and which ones to optimize genetically. This is done with specific diet recommendations, custom supplementation for their genetic makeup, and lifestyle recommendations to support optimization.
3-D Brain Imaging
This is the most important step of all, because this is when we can see every single area in the brain and how subconscious stress has been stored and has written neural pathways from the brain to the body. This is the most critical piece of information because your subconscious mind continually runs 95% of your physiology. Over these years at Revolution Health & Fitness we have developed advanced treatment protocols to rewire and reprogram negative subconscious programming. This is the single most important thing to do for your health — your mental, emotional and physical health — because your brain rules all! Every cell, tissue, gland, and organ in your body receive signals from your brain on what to do. So when our balancing therapies grow new neural pathways with no subconscious stressors, patients are transformed — not only healed physically, but also mentally and emotionally. The key is the brain must balance and we can see and confirm this balance in follow-up 3-D brain images. That’s how we know the therapy is complete. The patient feels great, and the imaging confirms what they feel: no blockages or imbalances.
And you will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free — in your mind, your emotions and your body.
And you ask: what is the truth? The answer is simple. It’s not a fact, it’s a relationship.
(1) Bohacek J, Mansuy IM. Epigenetic inheritance of disease and disease risk. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2013 Jan;38(1):220-36. doi: 10.1038/npp.2012.110. Epub 2012 Jul 11. PMID: 22781843; PMCID: PMC3521963. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3521963/
(2) Mulligan CJ, Quinn EB, Hamadmad D, Dutton CL, Nevell L, Binder AM, Panter-Brick C, Dajani R. Epigenetic signatures of intergenerational exposure to violence in three generations of Syrian refugees. Sci Rep. 2025 Feb 27;15(1):5945. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-89818-z. PMID: 40016245; PMCID: PMC11868390. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40016245/
