They’re with you more than you might think!
Halloween is nearly upon us. In the commercial world of marketing, the sweet treats are being promoted big time, both for Trick or Treat, and generally as a panacea to darker evenings. This will segue straight into the ramp up to Christmas, which seems to start earlier each year.
In many traditions, the end of October/beginning of November is a time to reconnect with ancestors. I’ve been reading around the subject of epigenetics recently. This is the study of the impact of the lives of parents, grandparents and even earlier generations on the health of offspring in the here and now.
It’s not rocket science that the diet and lifestyle choices and physical environment of a mother affects her babies as they develop within her womb. A very visible form of the impact of nutrition is in children born with the condition spina bifida, which is at least in part due to a deficiency in folate (vitamin B9).
The three generation moment
It’s actually scientifically logical that a grandmother’s gestational health plays a role too: the ova (eggs) that every woman has in her ovaries are actually formed while still a developing foetus in the womb. Think about: the egg that you developed from was formed while your mother was a developing foetus in your grandmother’s womb. I find that fascinating. Just the idea that there is direct physical link between me and my grandmother blows my mind every time I think about it. My ancestors are with me!
I’ve gone slightly off piste here, but the message that I pull from this is that anyone, men as well as women, who are thinking of starting a family any time soon, would be wise to evaluate diet and lifestyle before stopping the contraception. In my practice, I have seen young women with very low folate levels, which showed up on blood tests requested for other reasons for the most part. So at the very least ask your GP for a blood test. It varies from GP to GP whether or not they will accommodate, but mentioning the words tired and heavy periods can help if you’re female.
A more subtle way, and by subtle I mean harder to measure, in which ancestral history can affect you in the here and now is through DNA. You inherited half your genes from your mum and half from your dad. Clearly things like the colour of your eyes or skin are very visible and you can’t change them. Other things are not visible, and are so intrinsic that you don’t notice unless it’s something that results in a physiological issue or congenital condition.
Nurture over nature
Epigenetics (in a nutshell and over-simplifying massively = diet, lifestyle and environment) can add twists in the form of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNIPs). These are essentially the switch of one base or letter in the code amongst many millions that make up DNA.
Essentially every single characteristic that we have individually is encoded in DNA. Within that code, some characteristics can be coded differently with slightly different outcomes. For example, whether individually you have form A of a gene as opposed to form B might put you more predisposed to something eg running fast and less predisposed to something else eg aerobic endurance. That again is grossly oversimplified, but there are a series of genes which give greater or lesser likelihood of building fast twitch muscle.
There is an analogy that I often use with clients: think of your genes as the soil in your garden. The type and acidity of soil affects what will grow in it. Some plants thrive in well drained sandy soil but struggle in heavy clay. Some don’t like damp areas near rivers but like drier rocky conditions. That’s not to say that you can’t grow most things in most places IF you work at optimising the soil by adding nutrients, watering, sorting out the drainage etc.
Changing your future
And that is what I work on with my clients. Your ancestors may have created your ‘soil’, but they don’t write your future. There are tests that you can do to find out if you have any SNIPs that might be challenging. With a family history of heart disease on my Dad’s side of the family, I did a test to establish what my apolipoprotein markers are, as these can indicate a predisposition to heart disease. Thankfully my results show mine are neutral, I don’t have the ApoE4 SNIP. It is possible that my Dad had a different SNIP; I’ll never know the answer to that. But I do know that my Dad preferred food to exercise, especially in his later years, so that is a factor that contributed to his cardiovascular problems.
The starting point of metabolic health will always be digestion and managing stress. The two go hand in hand: if your digestion is out of kilter, that will manifest through all manner of things from constipation/diarrhoea to acid reflux to bloating/gas. If nothing changes, this will start having all manner of other effects within the body that will take a while to show themselves, but eventually show themselves they will.
Stress is a major contributor to digestive dysregulation. High cortisol levels divert physiological resources away from the digestive organs, resulting in poor digestion and nutrient absorption.
Between now and the end of the year, I will be running a series of webinars and short group programmes focussed each on an individual aspect of well-being. First up are managing acid reflux and surviving the party season without the misery of heartburn, and mindful eating, which is about making a stress free space around eating. Sign up for the first two below.
The webinars are free to attend, if you want to stay with me and to the deeper dive then I’d love to work with you
Upcoming webinars:
Friday 7th November at 1pm – Acid Reflux and the party season – register here
Friday 21st November at 4pm – Mindful Eating – register here