I talk a lot about the power of good choices on improving your metabolic health. However, I also need to mention these choices don’t just affect you — they also affect your children’s children.
The basics of health have years of research. We know if you eat whole, real foods and get proper sleep and exercise, you’re more likely to be metabolically healthy than someone who doesn’t.
But this is only part of the story.
How you age, where you live, and even how you’re born can have a monumental impact on your metabolic health.
These are known as epigenetic factors — and they’re far more impactful than genetics ever could be.
What is epigenetics?
Epigenetics is the study of how the environment influences our genes. This means where we live, how we behave, and what we’re exposed to can change how we eat, think, and form relationships with other people.
You should know epigenetics is not the same as genetics, even if the terms sound similar. Genetics refers to the physical makeup of your DNA. Epigenetics, on the other hand, refers to how the environment affects how your genes work.
In other words, epigenetics explores gene expression, while genetics explores gene sequence.
Let’s look at one of your cells, for example. Its DNA sequence is like an instruction manual. Epigenetic processes are like bookmarks for specific pages. They tell your cell what to read and when to read it.
Epigenetic processes start long before you’re born. Your parents are exposed to many environmental factors over the course of their lives, which allows various chemical compounds to bind with their DNA. These compounds force your cells to switch genes on or off.
And this is where things start to get interesting.
How do epigenetics change gene expression?
When chemical compounds attach to your DNA, they can alter how your body expresses its genes. This drastically affects your health and wellness, even changing your behaviors, raising your propensity for addiction, inhibiting your ability to lose weight, and much more.
Some epigenetic changes are permanent in humans and can be passed generation to generation. Others are easily reversed with lifestyle changes or by limiting environmental factors (think secondhand smoke).
There are three major types of epigenetic alterations:
DNA methylation
Methylation occurs when chemicals turn off your genes by attaching themselves to your DNA. Demethylation, the process of removing these chemical groups, turns your genes back on.
Abnormal methylation could increase your risks for chronic disease, with some studies linking it to cancer, autoimmune diseases, and metabolic disorders like hyperglycemia.
Histone modification
Histones — the proteins inside DNA — could be forced together by the presence of certain chemicals. The tighter your body packs histones together, the harder it is for cells to ‘read’ their instruction manuals (your DNA sequence) and keep genes turned on.
Scientists believe histone modifications can cause atherosclerosis, type 2 diabetes, IBS, and similar illnesses.
Noncoding RNA action
Noncoding RNAs, also known as ncRNAs, use chromatin remodeling to transcribe genetic information. They may also switch genes off or on in response to stress or environmental stimuli.
Studies show noncoding RNA actions could progress the development of heart failure. This could one day predict a patient’s propensity for heart attacks, making it easier to avoid cardiovascular disease.
What modifies our epigenetics?
There are genetic and non-genetic factors at work with epigenetics.
Let’s take a look at a few of the most common:
Illness
Some pathogens switch off certain genes to ensure their survival in your body. Mycobacterium tuberculosis, for example, turns off your IL-12B gene to suppress your immune system.
Drugs
Many medications can change your genetic expression, with some leading to the development of addiction. Prescription drugs like antidepressants and antiepileptics could create permanent changes in your brain.
Mental health
Chronic levels of stress produce glucocorticoids, which, like medications, alter the expression of genes in your brain. This could lead to PTSD and other mood disorders, including depression, anxiety, and bipolar I and II.
Pollutants
Heavy metals and air pollutants may alter DNA methylation. This can aggravate inflammation in your body and potentially speed up disease development (such as lung cancer).
Parents
Many of your parents’ epigenetics are passed down to you in utero. A disproportionate number of these depend on your mother, especially when it comes to the food she eats.
A study on pregnant women during the Dutch Hunger Winter found that maternal diet has a significant impact on epigenetics. Babies exposed to famine in early gestation had higher risks for chronic disease than unexposed siblings.
That said, you can’t blame poor metabolic health entirely on your parents. The food you choose to eat and the environment you choose to live in can still alter your epigenetics over time. Even identical twins with the same epigenetics at birth eventually have different gene expressions depending on their environment.
Age
The older you get, the less methylated your DNA becomes. Younger people are more likely to have high levels of DNA methylation, since they’re often developing rapidly and quite susceptible to environmental impacts (including food, exercise, smoking, and other factors).
How do epigenetics affect our metabolic health?
It’s clear epigenetics have an enormous impact on our bodies.
But for the sake of discussion, let’s look at America’s epigenetics from a bird’s eye view.
We’re surrounded by copious amounts of ultra-processed foods, which means it’s easy to eat things that harm our metabolic health.
We’re also an increasingly sedentary country, with three in five adults not getting an hour of exercise per week. This prevents us from altering gene expression in the development of healthy muscles.
Even if we do try to make healthy choices at the grocery store, many whole, real foods are covered in pesticides. Roughly 75% of all non-organic foods carry residual herbicides like glyphosate, exposing us to yet more gene-altering chemicals.
When we inevitably get sick from eating this food, well-meaning professionals may prescribe a cocktail of drugs. But even common prescriptions can increase depression or anxiety, which is bidirectional with chronic stress and can reduce healthy gene expression.
When we look at the ever-increasing sphere of epigenetic alterations, it’s no wonder why just 7% of us have good metabolic health.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, however. If anything, we know what we’re up against.
Take the humble agouti mouse, an animal genetically predisposed to be yellow, obese, and susceptible to metabolic disease. Scientists changed the epigenetics of pregnant females with a diet rich in methyl groups (which includes animal organs like liver). This switched off their genetic predispositions and allowed them to produce brown, lean, healthy babies.
There are two key takeaways I want you to see.
First, epigenetics have more of an impact than genetic makeup or family history.
Which is good news!
Second, it’s possible to change epigenetics — both for yourself and for the next generation.
Improving epigenetics for the next generation
There’s no way to change your family history. But you can change the present and lay the groundwork for a brighter future.
If you’re willing to make sustainable changes, you can take back your metabolic health and prepare the next generation for success.
I encourage patients to:
- Eat whole, real foods that come from the ground or are nourished by the ground.
- Quit smoking immediately, if you haven’t already.
- Research medications before adding them to your routine.
- Exercise often, since it’s a known intervention for pollutant-based epigenetic effects.
- Follow the seven principles of metabolic health, especially if you plan to have children.
The health you choose today will affect your children and grandchildren.
But as you’ve seen, we’re just scratching the surface.
If you’re interested in learning more about epigenetics, I highly suggest you do some research of your own.
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