A fun fact about me that you might not already know is that both of my parents are adopted, only children. That means I’ve never had aunts, uncles, cousins and other relatives like that.

It also means I know very little about my genetic code.

Today we can undergo genetic testing pretty easily, but when I was a young adult making lifestyle choices, that wasn’t as prevalent as it is now.

Luckily, because I’ve been fascinated by health for as long as I can remember, I was exposed to the study of epigenetics early in my life and way before most lay people had even heard of it.

Honestly, I’m not sure how many people still have heard of it today.

Are you familiar with epigenetics ?

It’s been studied in the way we understand it now since the 1990s.Before that, there was a general point of view that we were born with genetically derived DNA and whether it was “good” or “bad” was simply the luck of the draw.

If you had familial hypertension, cancer or dementia then you’d probably get it too and there was pretty much nothing you could do about it.

Pretty disempowering, right?

Well, now we know better – because of epigenetics!

While we all have a genetic predisposition to various diseases that we inherited from our ancestors, we now know that through the power of “epigenetics” (epi meaning above the gene) we can change how our genes are expressed by altering the environment we expose them to for better or worse.

Said another way: having a gene and that gene actually expressing are two different things.

This means that having the breast cancer gene is completely harmless if it never expresses.

What makes a gene express?

Our environment.

What controls the environment?

Our lifestyle.

Extensive twin studies have proven that 80% of our gene expression is controlled by our lifestyle.

A favorite saying among geneticists is:

Genes load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

That’s very empowering, right?

You’re not a victim of your genes.

You can consciously address what you eat and drink, how much you move and manage your stress, get quality sleep and a whole host of other things that make your “bad” genes irrelevant.

Today, the field of epigenetics is incredibly exciting because we know we can also influence how we age.

It’s so cool.

Reach out to me if you haven’t seen my free training on aging and our brain health.

In the meantime, eat lots of plants, keep moving your body and smile because you have so much potential for a long and healthy life!