HOW TO SWITCH OFF UNHEALTHY GENES
All the functions of our bodies, from the colour of your eyes to how you grow, are directed by our DNA.
Our DNA is like the blueprint of what makes us unique and contains thousands of series of codes — genes — that carry all the information your body needs to function and repair itself.
But genes can be damaged by viruses or exposure to pollutants or toxins in our diet and environment or even excess inflammation in the body — and this disrupts the signals within our bodies that prompt cells to repair and divide. This is when the problems generally start.
Our susceptibility to disease is inherited from our parents, and the luckier among us have a genetic makeup that makes them less likely to develop an illness. But regardless of genetic inheritance, a number of factors can damage our cells as we go through life. Sometimes, this is repaired fully, but sometimes our bodies’ defence mechanisms only manage to partially repair the DNA — but with an altered sequence of genes.
This re-arrangement, known as mutation, usually leads to premature ageing, a wide range of hormone disorders, arthritis, dementia and Parkinson’s disease, as well as cancer.
The damage can occur spontaneously during normal cell division or can be caused by excess UV light, radiation, environmental chemicals or ingested chemicals such as those found in burnt meat and smoke.
These chemicals can either damage DNA directly or form harmful particles known as free radicals that whizz through the cells like an outof-control firework damaging everything in their path.
If too many of these build up, it causes oxidative stress — which in turn damages your DNA within a cell.
What we do know is that a healthy lifestyle and a gut- friendly diet rich in phytochemicals, good fats and fibre, can promote the dominance of healthy genes while suppressing those that cause illness.
Eating these foods and living an active lifestyle also combine to damp down the build-up of oxidative stress and help your body combat disease should you fall ill.
Studies of identical twins provide a good insight into this age- old debate on the importance of your inherited genes over the lifestyle you lead.
Due to the common genetic material they share, there is an increased likelihood that the twin of a person diagnosed with a chronic illness will suffer the same fate.
But the recent Nordic Twin study, which followed the lives of more than 300,000 twins over nearly 60 years in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland found that if one of the twins developed breast cancer, the other had on average only about a 30 per cent risk of also developing the disease especially if they had different lifestyle and nutritional habits.
This means that the most important contributor to the causation of disease was determined by the way the twins chose to live their lives rather than the genes they were born with.