Your Genes Are Not Your Destiny

Hello everyone!

Did you know that the Latin word doctor means ‘to teach’? That’s what I want to do, share the knowledge that I’ve acquired during my journey setting up Mindful Medicine.

Let’s start right at the beginning, your genes. What are genes? Well, they’re what you inherit from your parents. They contain your DNA which gives instructions to your body to build different proteins that are needed to carry out different tasks. They contain the programming for the color of our hair and biological sex, but in some cases, our susceptibility to diseases

But here’s something we don’t all realize:

Your genes however, are NOT your destiny.

This is an extremely powerful statement but let me explain what I mean.

We all know how identical twins work, they’re well… identical, all the way down to their genes. You see, what happens with identical twin is that a fertilized egg splits into two, creating two genetically identical individuals. Interestingly enough, there’s a professor, named Tim Spector from Kings College, England (who coincidentally went to medical school with me). He has actually done some very interesting research on identical twins and found that sometimes even living in the same household and eating the same food, some twins ended up with very different diseases. Well if our genes were our destiny, we’d expect the same issues to arise in identical twins wouldn’t we?

There’s one possible explanation for this phenomenon, and Tim says its epigenetics.

Now there’s a big word, and very powerful word, ep·i·ge·net·ics. Why powerful? Well, epigenetics is basically the study of how our genes can be expressed differently and modified by environmental factors and lifestyle. Epigenetics gives us power to control our OWN destiny. There’s now, growing evidence that we can switch certain genes on and off, depending on how we decide to live. Now, THAT’S a powerful concept.

Your genes are not your destiny – your lifestyle is!

You can control the expression of certain diseases by what you do daily!

This is such an empowering concept, but how do we actually change our lifestyle to switch off certain genes? Changing your behavior. This is always the difficult part for everyone. But remember, nothing good ever comes easy. I believe that if you’re empowered with the right knowledge and you have the right support system, you can take control of your genes, of your destiny.

Start today by taking baby steps towards changing your lifestyle. You can choose what it’ll be.

Do you want to start by improving what you eat? Do you want to start with physical activity? Do you want to learn how to reduce and manage your stress? Do you want to learn how to sleep better? Do you want to take time to improve your social connectedness?

At Mindful Medicine, we constantly emphasize these five-pillars of health: nutrition, sleep, stress, physical activity and community. There are so many possible ways you can start taking control of your life, but remember the most important thing is TO START – to take that first step regardless of what it may be.

My goal was to help you realize that you have more control over your body than you probably ever thought. With this in mind, I hope my following blogs will be informative enough to help you implement the changes you want in your life. I hope that I’ve been able to empower you to start your journey to better health.

Welcome to your Mindful journey.