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How to Harness the Power of Epigenetics to Optimise Your Longevity and Reprogramme Your Genes
Have you ever heard of epigenetics? It’s an exciting field of science that has revealed the speed of the ageing process is not biologically fixed. Your DNA may be inherited from your ancestors, but your environment affects how your genes communicate with your body.
This article will explore the topic of epigenetics and how you can positively reprogramme your genes to optimise your health and longevity.
What is Epigenetics?
It’s the study of how your environment and behaviour affects your genes. Your DNA is your genetic template, with the order of its nucleotides forming your instructions for life. Genes are certain sequences of these nucleotides, and they instruct your body to make proteins. These are essential for initiating and accelerating biological processes, transporting molecules, and sending signals around your body. In this way, genes instruct your cells how to behave.
For many years, scientists believed the instructions issued by genes were fixed. That meant if you inherited certain genetic tendencies, it was simply bad luck.
However, research has now found genes alter their instructions in a dynamic way. Special tags called epigenetic markers sit on strands of DNA and detect signals from the outside world. These include stress levels, nutrients, lifestyle choices and environmental factors like toxins or pollutants. All these factors can influence how genes are expressed, in other words, whether they are switched on or off, and therefore their activity and influence.
Effectively, epigenetics changes how your body reads your DNA, a little like highlighting certain sections in an instruction manual. Therefore, gene expression can be activated or suppressed, like switching a light on or off.
This is exciting because it means your choices today can affect your health, not only now but into the future.
Methylation and Gene Expression
This is a process which can modify gene expression, usually inhibiting undesirable processes. In other words, it silences genes. It encompasses numerous chemical conversions occurring within DNA. These processes are dependent on the availability of several nutrients such as B vitamins and folic acid. On the other hand, methylation is affected by factors like stress and toxins, potentially activating dormant genes.
This means nutritional and lifestyle modifications can help keep beneficial processes in your cells working smoothly while inhibiting those not so helpful to health.
Nutrition and Epigenetics
The interplay between the food you eat and gene expression is called nutrigenomics. Chemicals contained in food cause genes to be switched on or off. Using the example of methylation, ensuring you’re consuming plenty of B vitamins can therefore beneficially alter gene expression. A good availability of nutrients can potentially inhibit the expression of inherited genetic tendencies to disease.
Healthspan vs Lifespan
The average UK lifespan stands at 78.8 years for men and 82.8 years for women (1). This represents more than double the global average life expectancy compared to 1900. However, because of the rise of chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease, many people nowadays are living a significant proportion of their lives in poor physical or mental health.
It’s no use concentrating on extending lifespan if much of the extra years are accompanied by ailments, diseases and frailty. In other words, it’s all very well living to a hundred, but of little benefit of the final forty years are spent suffering from disease.
Healthspan can therefore be thought of as the period of life spent in good health.
Epigenetics and Healthy Longevity
Epigenetics, by altering how your genes communicate with your body’s cells, plays a key role in how healthily you age. Genetic predispositions can make you more susceptible to certain diseases of ageing. However, that’s not the whole story because environmental factors act as the triggers that fire the gun.
Positive healthy habits could therefore influence the likelihood that inherited genetic tendencies are expressed. Factors like exercise, quality sleep and social connections positively alter gene expression, with toxins, stress and trauma suppressing beneficial genetic instructions. This knowledge can act as a motivator for positive change.
Mapping Your Genes
Nutrigenomic testing can reveal your inherited genetic makeup, in turn predicting how you respond to food. Furthermore, your genes can reveal inherited tendencies towards certain bodily processes operating less efficiently. This in turn may affect metabolic and cardiovascular health, detoxification and hormone metabolism, influencing your susceptibility to certain diseases. Testing can reveal whether you have an enhanced need for certain nutrients, too, and how your lifestyle may be affecting your gene expression.
This information is extremely empowering because it takes away the guesswork. It enables you to live a life aligned to your unique genes, making informed dietary and lifestyle choices.
Your diet and lifestyle can then be optimised, alongside appropriate specialised therapies here at The Forbes Clinic, to ensure your genes are communicating with your cells in the most positive way. For example, your diet can be fine-tuned by a Functional Nutritionist, or Somatic Therapies can help your body react more appropriately to stress.
You can take control over your genetic destiny. Take a proactive step to harness the power of knowledge today and embrace a healthy future.
