Can You Change Your Genes With Diet
We re not saying that you can prevent or delay the onset of alzheimer s if you eat.
Can you change your genes with diet. June 16 2008 if you change your lifestyle you change your genes. Together they bring energy provision to the brain improving neuronal function and brain plasticity. One way we can influence our genes without changing their basic structure is through the foods we eat. A plant based diet can turn off prostate cancer genes.
You ve heard the old saying you are what you eat sounds hokey but it s truer than we believe. Recent studies suggest that the food you eat could modify your genes and potentially your children s. But she thinks it is worth noting that the genes that we associate with disease risk can be influenced by diet. A diet high in refined carbohydrates that promotes high blood glucose attacks your dna on the other hand compounds like sulforaphane found in broccoli curcumin turmeric epigallocatechin gallate green tea and resveratrol wine can slow or potentially reverse dna damage.
Dietary nutrients modulate the same genes. In other words only a portion of your genes actually do stuff at any point in time. How diet can change your dna. That s sort of accurate.
You can t get different genes but how you act can change how your genes act report dean ornish md and colleagues at the. When i say moderate aerobic activity that really means that you re reaching 70 75 percent of your maximum heart rate. Nobel prize winner elizabeth blackburn and co author dr. We can t do anything to change our genes right.
Ornish a cardiologist fed 31 men with low grade prostate cancer a plant based diet with fewer than 10 of calories from fat. That s good but that isn t what we re looking for. Diet sleep and exercise modulate gene expression. If you can do an activity and you re able to talk and sing that s considered light aerobic activity.
Sure we have the genes we have but there is another factor to consider called gene expression you see not all of your genes are active. According to recent studies diet choices can actually change the way your genes behave. Not surprisingly diet can affect the health of your dna. Both can stimulate bdnf.
The men were encouraged to walk meditate and meet in group sessions. Now we re not talking about turning your brown eyes blue or going from mousy brown to a fiery head. Ornish found that a plant based diet in addition to specific lifestyle changes like stress reduction and moderate exercise caused more than 500 genes to change in only three months.