How Poor Food Choices Effects Your Genes

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New research by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) raises the striking possibility that even small amounts of occasional poor food choices may produce significant changes in gene expression that could negatively impact physiology and health.

Researchers describe how metabolism and physiology are connected to diet. Using C. elegans, a transparent roundworm often used as a model organism in genetic studies, the research team observed how different diets produce differences in gene expression in the worm that can then be linked to crucial physiological changes.

They found that when C. elegans are fed diets of different types of bacteria, they respond by dramatically changing their gene expression program, leading to important changes in physiology. Worms fed a  diet of Comamonas bacteria have fewer offspring, live shorter and develop faster compared to worms fed the standard laboratory diet of E. coli bacteria.

The researchers identified at least 87 changes in C. elegans gene expression between the two diets. This connection provided one of the critical links between diet, gene expression and physiology.

Amazingly researchers observed that even when fed a small amount of the Comamonas bacteria in a diet otherwise composed of E. coli bacteria, C. elegans exhibited dramatic changes in gene expression and physiology. These results provide the possibility that different diets are not “healthy” or “unhealthy” but that specific quantities of certain foods may be optimal under different conditions and for promoting different physiological outcomes.

“It’s just as true that a small amount of a ‘healthy’ food in an otherwise unhealthy diet could elicit a beneficial change in gene expression that could have profound physiological effects,” said lead researcher.

-Cell

Dr. Keith & Laurie Nemec’s Comments on How Poor Food Choices Effects Your Genes:
The bad news is that if you keep eating bad food it will negatively affect your health by altering your genes. The good news is that if you start eating some healthy food instead of the unhealthy food it will also affect your genes to positively influence your health.
This research brought up a very important point. It is not only the type and amount of food you eat that counts but also under what conditions are you eating it. For example if you eat some cookies while on vacation, relaxing on the beach without a care in the world at that moment, this will have a completely different effect then eating the same cookies after a stressful day that culminated with you losing your job. One is eating something unhealthy when the mental/emotional state is more balanced whereas the other is eating the unhealthy food when the mental/emotional state is very out of balance.
What does this mean to you?
See the big picture in everything in your life. The more stressed you are the more balanced you must become to counter the stress. We know this is difficult to do but just remember that if your mind and emotions are weakened they have already weakened your body so you do not want to throw gasoline on the fire.
What can you do about it?
Learn how to be healthy in every way so you will know how the big picture works. Work on your spiritual health, your mental and emotional health and your physical health everyday. All you have to do is decide to make a change today and then DO IT and you have begun the journey. That is how any task gets accomplished. At first it seems impossible, then possible but very, very difficult, then difficult, then doable, then doing, then doing with excitement, then excelling, then mastering.

These steps are covered in detail on our audio teaching: Sally & George- Going Deeper, Seven Basic Steps to Total Health and our How to Know You Are Healed series.

1.   Sally & George

2.   The Seven Basic Steps to Total Health

3.   How to Know You Are Healed

You control your genes when you control yourself. Your genes are just a product of your lifestyle and the environment that you have created. This is so exciting. You have control over your destiny. You are not just a bunch of genes passed to you but instead you can control how those genes manifest. So get started DOING IT!