In Layman’s Terms

Health and longevity is a topic that is near and dear to me. I believe that while genes play a large part in your well-being as you age, your lifestyle choices determine how those genes are expressed. While you may have a gene that makes you more susceptible to heart disease, getting heart disease is not written in stone. If you are sedentary, overweight, and consume seed oils and processed sugar, you can almost guarantee that you will get heart disease. If you never stop moving, get plenty of sunlight, and eat foods without labels, you will significantly decrease the chance that your genetic susceptibility to heart disease comes to fruition.

Poor health is inflammation in the body, and that inflammation expresses itself differently in people based on their genes. An example would be two people who have a sensitivity to nuts. While consuming nuts may trigger psoriasis outbreaks for one person, another person may experience joint pain. How the inflammation manifests in their bodies will have much to do with their genetic makeup. When the body is inflamed over years and decades, it dramatically increases the chances that an individual will develop a chronic disease, which has everything to do with their genetic makeup.

While what I am saying is contested in the medical world, I would encourage people to do their research exploring how diet and lifestyle affect health. Don’t succumb to the appeal to authority, and follow your doctor’s orders blindly. Let us not forget that doctors used to make commercials selling cigarettes, promote Crisco as heart-healthy, and made pasta and bread essential foods for several decades. Keeping those previous failures in mind, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that your lifestyle choices, environment, and food you eat could determine if you do or do not develop a chronic disease due to a gene being turned on or off.

Someone With More Street Cred

Fortunately, some doctors are beginning to break with the medical establishment.

Here are some excerpts from Dr. Catherine Shanahan’s new book Deep Nutrition.

• “If you need glasses or get cancer or age faster than you should, you very well may have perfectly normal genes. What’s gone wrong is how they function, what scientists call genetic expression. Just as we can get sick when we don’t take care of ourselves, it turns out, so can our genes.”

• “We hear all the time that harmful gene mutations that cause disease are random, but the latest science suggests that’s not always true.”

• “Every bite you eat changes your genes a little bit.”

Sounds Serious. What can you do about it?

Don’t worry; I ate garbage for a long time before I saw the nutritional light, and as far as I know, I'm ok. However, the sooner you stop putting junk in your body, the better chance you’ll have that your genes don’t turn on you.

If you want to get started healing right now. Remove the following foods (if you want to call them that) from your diet immediately:

Seed Oils - These oils are poison to your body. Click the link for a comprehensive list and description.

Ultra processed Foods - Industrial foods made almost entirely of substances extracted from foods like oils, fats, sugars, starches, and proteins, or synthesized in labs and factories with few, if any, ingredients that come directly from natural plant or animal foods.

Processed Sugar - Also called refined sugar, is sugar that's extracted from foods like sugar cane or sugar beets, chemically produced and added to other foods.

Now What Should I Eat?

You will hear me say this over and over. Diets are highly individual and each person’s unique biochemistry will determine which foods they thrive on. Furthermore, someone who is metabolically unhealthy, or overweight, should not be eating the same foods as someone thats a high performing athlete. For example, I eat a lot of white rice, fruit, and honey, but you may want to avoid those extra carbohydrates.

Keeping that in mind, the below foods will lead you on your path to healthier genes.

• Grass-Fed Meat

• Organs

• Raw Dairy

• Organic Fruit

• Raw Honey

• Wild Caught Seafood (occasionally to avoid excess heavy metals)

• Organic Vegetables (Ones low in plant defense chemicals)

You can go down all kinds of nutritional rabbit holes (I have), but it doesn’t get much easier than eliminating seed oils, ultra processed foods and processed sugar, and pulling from the above five to six. Go forth and conquer.