Do Genetics Determine Our Fate?

Are you healthy, or just lucky?

Key Cellular Nutrition
5 min readAug 19, 2021

If I had a dollar for every time over the years that I’ve had somebody tell me that their ill health is due to genes, I’d be a very wealthy man.

“It’s in my family.”

I was raised to think the same way, that genes are our destiny. That our hands are tied, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Your genes make you who you are.

But then I met a woman who turned that idea on its head for me. Back when I was practicing chiropractic, I had a patient named Rita. Rita had five sisters, all of whom ended up getting breast cancer, along with Rita’s mother.

Now, you’d think that Rita would inevitably develop breast cancer, too, right?

Only Rita was different than her mother and sisters. She was a real health nut, and had been that way since she was young.

I met Rita when she was middle-aged and knew her until she was in her 70s, which is when I quit practicing chiropractic and lost touch with her.

But Rita was ever the picture of health — no cancer diagnosis for her. It was an eye-opener for me. How could that be? Was it just a coincidence?

Lifestyle choices have a huge impact on our health outcomes.

Your Health Depends on Multiple Factors

To give you another example, my mother had two brothers. Both had bad hearts by the time they were in their 60s. One, Andy, had really advanced heart disease. The doctor was even discussing heart transplant surgery.

The younger of the brothers, Mike, went to the doctor and was told that because of his high cholesterol, he would end up with heart disease. The doctor told him he had the same genetics as his brother, and there wasn’t much he could do about it. He accepted it, and didn’t do anything to change his lifestyle.

Mike ended up dying at 64 years of age. Andy, today, is 82. He walks five miles a day. He’s incredibly fit. That was the difference between the two brothers. Andy decided he wouldn’t just accept his DNA as his destiny.

Mike didn’t think there was anything that could be done. But Andy is still alive and kicking, and his doctors say they cannot believe how healthy he is.

The Duke Agouti Mice Study

Back in 2007, a researcher at Duke was doing an experiment with agouti mice. They get their name from the agouti gene, which dictates whether mice have ill health, like yellow fur, and whether they will die of heart disease, cancer, or diabetes.

If a mother mouse had the agouti gene, she’d pass it down to her children and lo and behold, the kids would be overweight. They’d die early with the characteristic yellow hair.

The Duke researcher knew there was a thing called methyl groups that work as tags on our genes, and can influence gene expression. He knew where the agouti gene was, and thought he might be able to change it with a methyl group.

To start, the researcher took pregnant mice or those who would soon become pregnant, and started feeding them nothing but greens and supplements.

Surprisingly, these agouti mothers gave birth to mice that were slender, brown, and had longer life expectancies. They lived way longer than the typical agouti mice, in fact.

This study blew the lid off the understanding of genetics. It showed that genes were no longer our destiny.

Genes load the gun. But what we do in our everyday lives determines whether we pull the trigger. You might have genes of susceptibility. You might have a genetic weakness. But it’s not the end-all, be-all, in most cases.

Reading about this research really blew me away. It never sat right with me that there was nothing you could do to take your health into your own hands. And I’d seen, in multiple examples, that genes were not our destiny.

The Fat Gene — and You and Your Family’s Long-Term Health

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that obesity is an epidemic in our society.

A lot of people write it off as a part of their genes; something that simply cannot be changed. In the past, it was believed if you had what is called the FTO gene, obesity was your destiny. This gene resulted in a lethal form of obesity. And we were pretty sure there was nothing that could be done about it.

But That Wasn’t the End of the Story…

Scientific research showed otherwise. Simple changes, like walking every day for a set period of time, dampened the gene expression by over 40%. And that was just from walking!

Then, the scientists wanted to take it a step further. Rather than the Standard American Diet, which is killing people, the test participants adapted a healthy, whole-food diet.

As a result, the FTO gene expression was squashed by over 70%!

Your Choices Reach For Generations

You’ve heard “we are what we eat,” but it goes so much deeper than that. We are what our mothers and grandmothers ate. It has an impact on all of us.

There was a study in Sweden, looking at a particular county in the north, back in the 1880s. Back then, these people were cut off from society. Whatever they had for food was what they grew or raised. There would be lean periods, and periods of abundance, too.

The data studied looked at people who lived primarily during the famine times vs. people who were living during the feasting times.

And guess what?

The people who were primarily alive during the famine time lived six years longer than the others.

But it went even further than that.

The results of it went to children and grandchildren, too. So think about that today, when you’re wondering what you can do to impact the health of your family. The foods we eat, the exercise we do, the toxins we’re exposed to — you can change your gene expression, and it has a ripple effect on your kids and grandkids.

The health choices you make today matter not only for yourself, but for the generations to come!

I’ll Get Off My Soapbox

I’ve given you enough examples that you’re probably saying “Okay, I get it. A genetic weakness is not a guarantee of ill health.”

And I hope you do.

But let me just leave you with this little tidbit: the U.S. comprises 4.7% of the world’s population. Yet we consume over 60% of the world’s drugs!

How insane is that?

And it wouldn’t be that way if people knew how much control they had over their health.

I’ve seen, over and over, people who come to me that have been told “There’s nothing more that can be done. Get your affairs in order.” And I’ve seen them return to robust health, despite the medical doctor having written them off.

Making changes in your lifestyle that support health in the body will put the power back into your hands!

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Key Cellular Nutrition
Key Cellular Nutrition

Written by Key Cellular Nutrition

Our mission is to help as many people as possible reach their highest level of health through cellular healing. “Fix the cell to get well.”

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