Because of cutting-edge, 21st century, scientific discoveries, we now know everyday foods you choose have the power to switch off genes that put you at risk for a particular condition. The end result: Increase odds of preventing—even reversing—an ailment with diet. Welcome to the world of Nutritional Epigenetics!
—By Deborah Kesten
Some call it a “new paradigm” and “the medicine of the future.” At the same time, it is so profoundly changing our understanding of health and healing, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has poured multi-millions of dollars into research on it.
What’s the brouhaha about? Nutritional epigenetics, the emerging new science about how the foods you eat switch genes on or off that can lead either to wellness or illness. But this paradigm-shifting understanding of food, genes, and health does even more, because it provides a crystal ball not only into your potential health, but also into the health of your children, even of unborn generations. Be assured: the age of nutritional epigenetics has arrived.
The Promise of Nutritional Epigenetics: DNA is NOT Your Destiny!
Here’s how epigenetics works: “Epi” means “on top of, while “genetics” refers to the DNA coded in the 20,000-25,000 genes that are housed in each genome that is in every cell in your body.
What’s especially fascinating—and health-changing—is this 21st century discovery: Sitting on top—“epi” means “on top”—of each genome that houses your genes in every cell of your body—is another genome called an “epigenome.” And while genes in your actual genome don’t change, healthful nutrients in the food you eat may send messages that switch off the expression of ailments some genes are coded for. But it also works the other way: conversely, health-harming chemicals and additives in, say, ultra-processed food and fast food—may also interact with both your epigenome and your genome, and enable disease coded in your genes to manifest and express itself.
What I’m saying is this: A revolution is taking place in biology. For decades, scientists believed DNA determined health destiny—for both ourselves and what we pass on to our children. But the newly emerging science of epigenetics—including nutritional epigenetics—is re-writing the rules of heredity and health. For it tells us that while you might be born with a genetic predisposition to a particular ailment—say, obesity, heart disease, or diabetes—the tendency comes not only from genes you inherited from parents, it may also be due to the diet of your parents—even the diet of your grandparents—which influenced your epigenome.
In other words, research on nutritional epigenetics tells us that the food choices we make each day—as well as other aspects of our lifestyle and environment (stress, exercise, social support, sleep, etc.)—have the power to “override” the health tendency coded in your genes. And then there’s this: the health messages coded in your epigenes—based on your everyday diet—not only influence you, they can be passed on to your children. Even your grandchildren!
This means that your daily diet may have a powerful impact on your genes and health and the “health status” of the genes you pass on to your children. With this in mind, the promise of epigenetics is pregnant with promise. Why? Because it has the potential to change medicine as it is practiced tomorrow—and provide a new nutrition-health paradigm for the twenty-first century.
But you don’t have to wait and see. You can start benefiting from the emerging science of nutritional epigenetics today.
From Obesity & Illness to Normal Weight & Health
The Agouti Mice Study
Perhaps the best demonstration of how the new science of nutritional epigenetics is rewriting the rules of diet, heredity, and disease, is a landmark study published in 2003 by Robert Waterland, a postdoctoral student at the time, and Randy Jirtle, a professor of radiation oncology at Duke University. Waterland and Jirtle were especially interested in epigenetics and the way in which it might influence phenotype and gene expression. Given this, they focused their attention on a particular strain of mice that carry what’s called the Agouti gene, because not only does the mutant gene cause Agouti mice to inherit a yellow coat, it makes them obese, ravenous, and prone to cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes, and in turn, shortened lifespans.
Given the extreme physical and health manifestations that Agouti mice inherit, the question Waterland and Jirtle wanted to explore was this: Would a mild modification in the diet of Agouti mothers affect the genetic legacy of a yellow coat and susceptibility to disease they passed on to their children?
To proceed, Waterland and Jirtle designed their deceptively simple, but groundbreaking, study. Just prior to the mother mice becoming pregnant, the scientists supplemented the mothers’ already-adequate diet with a group of four vitamins that are called methyl donors: this includes the B-vitamin folic acid, B12, choline, and betaine.
They chose these methyl-rich supplements, because many prior studies had linked this particular methyl chemical group with the power to launch epigenetic changes that switch genes either on or off.
Would the chemical switch made possible by the methyl group consumed by the mother mice silence the harmful and lethal effects of the Agouti gene in their children? Remarkably, the offspring in Jirtle and Waterland’s study suggest this is exactly what happened.
Unlike the yellow, obese, sickly parent mice that were given the methyl donors, most of their offspring had the normal brown coat of mice; they were slender; they weren’t prone to heart disease, cancer, and diabetes; and they had a normal lifespan.
Bottom line: Without changing the DNA of the mice, the methyl donors—meaning, the four vitamins—that had attached to the Agouti gene in pregnant Agouti mothers, suppressed its devastating health effects in the offspring. And the profound transformation was due to a simple change in the moms’ diet just before conception.
Curtailing Breast Cancer:
The Landmark Shanghai Breast Cancer Study
This astonishing study on Agouti mice introduced the world to nutritional epigenetics and its profound healing possibilities. But the question still remained: Can diet-gene science be of applied to human beings? Can it help the millions of us who struggle with weight concerns, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and other chronic conditions that have become common to many Americans?
To find out, a team of geneticists, cell biologists, and epidemiologists from China and the United States, launched the landmark Shanghai Breast Cancer Study (SBCS)—the largest and most comprehensive study of its kind. Called a population (epidemiological) case-control study, the three-year project included women between 20 and 70 years of age living in Shanghai, China. One group of 3035 women already had been diagnosed with breast cancer, while the second group of 3037 randomly selected women, were cancer-free.
The question the researchers wanted to answer was this: Is there a relationship between the consumption of a particular group of vegetables, called cruciferous (Brassicaceae) vegetables, and a risky gene linked with breast cancer called GSTP1 val/val?
Part of the mustard family, cruciferous vegetables include foods we’re all familiar with: broccoli, radish, turnip, and arugula, and greens such as collard, kale, mustard, and China’s bok choy.
The findings…
The breakthrough findings are exceptional and groundbreaking, because they provide insight, hope, and proactive dietary possibilities for the much-feared diagnosis of breast cancer.
Women with the val/val genotype linked with breast cancer—who also have a low intake of cruciferous vegetables—have a 1.7-fold increased risk for breast cancer. Women with the same genotype who consume a diet high in cruciferous vegetables lower their odds of breast cancer, because nutrients in these particular vegetables seem to lessen the potential cancer-causing effects of the val/val genotype.
Ultimately, the key take-away message from the Shanghai Breast Cancer Study is this: if you have the GSTP1 val/val allele (the genetic variation that makes you vulnerable to breast cancer) certain phytonutrients in cruciferous vegetables can compensate for the breast-cancer gene you inherited and in turn, lower your risk for breast cancer.
The Takeaway: It’s About Gene Expression
Here’s the bottom line: Nutrients in food have the power to reset your genes—NOW—for wellness or illness. Groundbreaking research in the 21st century has created a clear connection between diet and its ability to silence—or switch off—the harmful effects coded in genes. Or conversely, to allow health-harming genes to express and manifest ailments.
In other words, rapid progress in the field of epigenetics has given us insights into food and launching your genes on a path that leads to illness; or conversely, to activate “health” genes—often instantly—that can promote a longer, healthier life. For both you and your offspring.
The key message: Nutritional epigenetics is about regulating gene activity with food. Given this, consider making modifications in your everyday food choices, so that the foods you choose have the power to switch off genes that may put you (and your offspring!) at risk for certain conditions.
To get started… Although nutritional epigenetics is in its infancy, it’s pretty safe to say that—as with the cruciferous vegetables in the Shanghai Breast Cancer Study that lowered risk of breast cancer—it is nutrients in plant-based foods (fruits, veggies, whole grains, legumes, raw nuts and seeds) that have been shown to “switch off” health-harming genes, and increase odds of preventing—even reversing—a chronic condition.
The end result: Health may manifest instead of illness.