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Go to Health!: Don't Blame Your GenesBy Peter May
iBerkshires Columnist
05:52PM / Saturday, July 05, 2008
 | | Peter May |
The current rage in biomedical science rests heavily on having us believe that "defective" genes cause the main diseases afflicting and killing millions of Americans each year.
You know the lineup: cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, obesity and Alzheimer's disease. Not to mention genetic theories relative to autism, ADHD, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and alcoholism.
And, I am sure, in the near future, the disease "concoctions" — erectile dysfunction, restless leg syndrome, sleep disorders, etc., that are marketed and sold to more and more of us each year — will also be revealed as having a genetic origin.
Isn't it interesting that 100 years ago, almost all, if not all, of these diseases (except for alcoholism) were rarely, if ever, seen in a doctor's office? Why is that?
Obviously, it is because our genes are not defective and are not the cause.
One would have to believe that our genetic blueprint, which hasn't changed in 40,000 years, quite suddenly and dramatically deteriorated in the past 100 years. But genes don't work like that; evolution takes time and selects for survival.
And, if there is an obesity gene, how come obese people can lose weight, but can't change their eye color? If it is genetic, how can Type II diabetes be cured, depression overcome, and heart disease largely reversed? And how come some women with the "breast cancer gene" get cancer, while others don’t? That sounds more like "bad luck" than "bad genes."
Genetic diseases such as Down's syndrome, hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease and others are 100 percent. They affect 100 percent of those with abnormalities in their genes or chromosomes that occur at conception. Fortunately, they are also relatively rare.
If not defective genes, what is it? Genetic predisposition?
Your genes are active your whole life. They are how your body interacts with our world. To that extent, everything, including all disease, is genetic. However, genes are not autonomous. They are "expressed," "turned-on" or "off," in response to environmental stressors/stimuli as your body's innate and perfect physiological adaptation response attempts to maintain balance (homeostasis), ultimately, to save your life. Therefore, genetic predisposition always requires exposure to an environmental stressor — emotional, chemical or physical.
While some of us may have lower thresholds of exposure for the expression of disease, exposure is essential. For instance; they claim there is a gene for hangover that predisposes one to hangovers. However, hangover can only occur if one drinks alcohol. Without the exposure, the hangover will never happen.
Family history is more a matter of exposure (both environment and learned behaviors) than genes. And, the environment starts in the womb.
For example; an obese mother, typically, is malnourished. The fetus's genes adapt to this environment by creating a storage mode, thus predisposing the baby to obesity. When born, the baby will probably grow up in a family environment with poor eating habits and a sedentary lifestyle, further encouraging obesity. It is not defective genes or programmed obesity.
We live in a toxic world that constantly assaults and taxes our genetic defenses.
Some exposures, like water and air pollution, we can't avoid. Our foods are filled with herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, antibiotics, hormones, chemical additives, preservatives and much more.
We coat ourselves with personal-care products loaded with chemicals, in toothpastes, shampoos, soaps, deodorants, hair sprays, gels, makeups, colognes, sunscreens and more. We live in houses filled with chemical cleansers, detergents, out-gassing carpets and paints and we work in factories or offices replete with toxins. And, we take vaccines and tons of drugs. Almost all of the above contain chemicals that are known carcinogens.
It is way too easy, convenient and profitable to blame our genes and not our environment or lifestyles. That way we have no personal responsibility or recourse. If we believe it is genetic, there is nothing we can do about it but take a pill or have surgery.
Your lifestyle has far more to do with your health than genetic predisposition. In reality, you can alter your genetic health, for better or worse, by your lifestyle choices based on the decisions you make every day in how you think, in the food choices you make and in the amount of exercise you get.
Peter May is a doctor of chiropractic and a local resident with a practice in North Adams. He writes a monthly column on health. |
Your Comments
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Genes are often to blame for autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, cancer, autoimmune disorders etc. http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20070830-000004.xml
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/14/2274718.htm
http://www.schizophreniaforum.org/for/curr/Malaspina/default.asp
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23849196-5000117,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternal_age_effect
http://how-old-is-too-old.blogspot.com/ | | from: Leslie Feldman | on: 07-05-2008 12:00AM
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Dr May:
Attached is yet another opinion that directly contradicts your opinions on autism and genes.
Care to comment?
concerned mother of child living with Asperger's
Gene sweep yields half a dozen autism culprits
Variety of mutations keep brain from forming proper connections
Study uncovers new genetic link to autism
July 10: Harvard researchers have uncovered at least six new genes that can increase the risk for autism, providing hope that doctors can identify at-risk children earlier. NBC’s Robert Bazell reports.
Nightly News
WASHINGTON - Harvard researchers have discovered half a dozen new genes involved in autism that suggest the disorder strikes in a brain that can't properly form new connections.
The findings also may help explain why intense education programs do help some autistic children — because certain genes that respond to experience weren't missing, they were just stuck in the "off" position.
"The circuits are there but you have to give it an extra push," said Dr. Gary Goldstein of the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, which wasn't involved in the gene hunt but is well-known for its autism behavioral therapy.
The genetics suggest that "what we're doing makes sense when we work with these little kids — and work and work and work — and suddenly get through," he said.
But the study's bigger message is that autism is too strikingly individual to envision an easy gene test for it. Instead, patients are turning out to have a wide variety, almost a custom set, of gene defects.
"Almost every kid with autism has their own particular cause of it," said Dr. Christopher Walsh, chief of genetics at Children's Hospital Boston, who led the research published in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
Autism spectrum disorders include a range of poorly understood brain conditions, from the mild Asperger's syndrome to more severe autism characterized by poor social interaction, impaired communication and repetitious behaviors.
It's clear that genes play a big role in autism, from studies of twins and families with multiple affected children. But so far, the genetic cause is known for only about 15 percent of autism cases, Walsh said.
Large chunks of missing DNA
So Walsh's team took a new tack. They turned to the Middle East, a part of the world with large families and a tendency for cousins to marry, characteristics that increase the odds of finding rare genes. They recruited 88 families with cousin marriages and a high incidence of autism, from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. They compared the DNA of family members to search for what are called recessive mutations — where mom and dad can be healthy carriers of a gene defect but a child who inherits that defect from both parents gets sick.
In some of the families, they found large chunks of missing DNA regions that followed that recessive rule. The missing regions varied among families, but they affected at least six genes that play a role in autism.
Here's why this matters: All the genes seem to be part of a network involved in a basic foundation of learning — how neurons respond to new experiences by forming connections between each other, called synapses.
In the first year or two of life — when autism symptoms appear — synapses rapidly form and mature, and unnecessary ones are "pruned" back. In other words, a baby's brain is literally being shaped by its first experiences so that it is structurally able to perform learning and other functions of later life.
Troubles sculpting the brain
"This paper points to problems specifically in the way that experience sculpts the developing brain," explained Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which helped fund the work.
Some earlier research had pointed to the same underlying problem, so these newly found genes "join a growing list to suggest that autism is a synaptic disorder," he said.
If that sounds discouraging, here's the good news: The missing DNA didn't always translate into missing genes. Instead what usually was missing were the on/off switches for these autism-related genes. Essentially, some genes were asleep instead of doing their synapse work.
"I find that hopeful" because "there are ways that are being discovered to activate genes," Walsh said. "This might be an unanticipated way of developing therapies in the long term for autism: Identifying these kids where all the right genes are present, just not turned on in the right way."
At Kennedy Krieger, Goldstein thinks the work may provide a gene-level explanation for why some children already are helped by intense therapy.
"We have trouble getting through to these children, but with repeated stimulation we can do it," he said. "These are circuits that have an ability not so much to recover but to work around the problem.
| | from: hopeful parent | on: 07-10-2008 12:00AM
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`Dear Hopeful Parent.
I appreciate your intelligent and considered response to my article. However, I do not see that the study you cited, in any way, contradicts what I wrote. In fact, in my opinion, it only bolsters my position.
Throughout the study they refer to:
1. genes that can increase the risk for autism
2. genes that respond to experience weren't missing, they were just stuck in the "off" position
3. The missing DNA didn't always translate into missing genes. Instead what usually was missing were the on/off switches for these autism-related genes. Essentially, some genes were asleep instead of doing their synapse work.
Increased ‘risk’ is the same as ‘genetic predisposition’ which requires environmental exposure to ‘turn-on’ or turn-off’ the expression of that genetic predisposition / risk.
“Genes do not produce behavioral or mental states. Genes carry the instructions and template for producing and assembling amino acids and proteins into anatomical structures. Behavioral and mental traits, however, are the product of an interaction between anatomical structure and experience (and exposures).” (Blaming the Brain: Elliot Valenstein, Phd)
True genetic disorders happen at conception and occur in 100% of those affected. The statement in the article you cited: "Almost every kid with autism has their own particular cause of it,” is totally inconsistent with the origin of genetic disease.
As an informed parent, I am sure you know that the incidence of autism is skyrocketing, if not bordering on epidemic: an increase in incidence from 1 in 10,000 children fifteen years ago to 1in 150 children today, and growing. This cannot be explained either by sudden catastrophic changes in our genes or by better diagnosis.
What is changing dramatically is our lifestyle and our exposures.
Our children are increasingly being born to unhealthy parents. More and more are being denied all the benefits (known and unknown) of the natural birthing process and are being extracted by c-section (as if the quality of the female pelvis and their ability to give birth has genetically deteriorated over time as well.) They are having foreign proteins and chemical additives injected into their bodies at birth and over 64 times by the age of 4. They are fed chemical formulas with cow’s milk which has been implicated in many auto-immune diseases, including Type 1 diabetes and possibly autism.
I strongly recommend that you read “Gut and Psychology Syndrome” by Natasha Campbell-McBride. Dr. McBride is a neurologist, the mother of an autistic child, who specializes in treating autism.
I would be happy to discuss any of your concerns in person. Thank you for your comments.
| | from: dr may | on: 07-18-2008 12:00AM
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This is just what I would expect to hear from a chiropractor. They are often pseudo scientists of the highest order.
Modern genetic research, along with brain imaging, is showing us a clearer picture of mental disorders every day. Yes they are genetic, and yes environmet can be a factor.
I suggest you read Ernst Mayr's book "What Evolution Is" to get a better understanding of how natural selection works. Genotype and phenotype are two very different concepts. | | from: kyle | on: 07-22-2008 12:00AM
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