I want to give you a quick new way to think about the relationship between nutrition, exercise and disease. Just where does disease come from? Is the meaning of genetic defined as those things for which we have no control? Or can our environment influence how it manifests itself? The secret to reversing the progression of disease is to change the genetic expression of your genes. Everything that impacts our environment from nutrition, exercise and stress interacts with our genes which causes them to be “read” or expressed properly and healthfully or poorly and with disease causing results.

Heath results when your genes express themselves well, and is a result of taking care of your environment by eating properly, resting well and getting plenty of physical movement. This gives your genes the proper nutrition and environment from which to thrive thereby decreasing the risk of poor expression resulting in diseases.

Disease results from poorly expressed genes. Any kind of stress to the body can cause this. A wound or accident can affect the internal organs and mechanisms of the body that in turn create a negative environment robbing them of proper nourishment and care required to allow for good gene expression. Poor eating habits can ruin the inner workings of the cell, destroy required molecules and substrates needed to carry out metabolic processes and cause the genes to express themselves poorly. This relationship between nutrition and gene expression is a scientific study called nutrigenomics. You are seeing some of it now with experiments like the discovery of resveratrol (found in the tannins of the grape skin that goes into making wine) and the way in that it is thought to extend the cellular life cycle, or the fact that trans-fats lead to cellular degeneration. Food quality is one of the most important aspects to genetic expression.

Your food choices determine which genes are turned on or off. Eating real whole foods instead of processed packaged goods effects genetic expression. If a food source has phytochemicals rather than toxic chemicals it may create good or bad gene expression. Sugars and fats create imbalances leading to a diseased state. Too many of either results in increases in hormonal levels beyond the norm or drops in other levels below the norm touching off a cascade of steps leading down the disease pathway.  Most diseases such as cancer are the result of an errant protein molecule gone awry.  Protein molecules are a direct result of DNA expression.   Something has to trigger the DNA to suddenly change the way it creates those proteins, and this is often a result of its environment.

So if you think that all disease is genetic, think again as we all have the potential for good and bad genetic expression. We just need to maintain good expression and never go down the long-term path leading to abnormal expression.