KC Craichy talks with Dr. Leonard Smith about genetically inherited diseases and what you need to know about it to achieve super health.
Audio Transcription
KC: Welcome to Living Fuel TV. I’m KC Craichy with special guest, Dr. Leonard Smith. Welcome back, Leonard.
Dr. Smith: Great to be here. Thanks.
KC: So you’re genetically predisposed to a certain disease. Grandma had it, granddad had it, mom and dad had it. Does that mean you’re going to have it? Today, we’re going to talk about that. Now, Leonard, genetically inherited disease. Now, that is a real factor.
Dr. Smith: Yes, it is. No question about it.
KC: I’ve read that it’s really only five or ten percent of the reality of the actual disease progression in the next generation.
Dr. Smith: That’s true.
KC: So diet and lifestyle are a huge predictor of the outcome.
Dr. Smith: Yes. And we’ve known that for some time, but now science has actually figured it out, because what we have is an epigenetic code, which are a series of enzymes and locks on the genetic code. And that epigenetic code is responsive to diet and lifestyle. And it’s things like DNA methylation is part of the epigenome, and things like histone locks and certain types of signaling RNAs. But the bottom line is it sits there and protects the code just like… and I love to use the analogy of a piano keyboard. You’ve got the keyboard there, but you don’t want just anything to hit all the keys. So the epigenetic code is almost like the thing that you’d have over the keyboard to protect it. Then, as stimuli come in actually from the blood vessels, all the cells of the body have receptors. The receptors respond very nicely to things that are in our natural diet. And when these natural polyphenols, catechins, gallocatechins, all these different antioxidants and what not, when they actually connect with some of these cellular receptors, they release a series of protein kinases that actually then send signals literally to the epigenome on how the genetic code should be played. In essence, the cell membrane is really like the conductor.
KC: That’s fascinating.
Dr. Smith: It is. And then what happens is when that epigenome is open, it’ll open so that part of it will be under expressed, and part of it over expressed. Every single thing causes either under or over expression of different combinations or patterns in genes, just like what happened with playing a piano. You can be doing all of this on that one and nothing over here, and then you can switch.
KC: Isn’t that fascinating? So the reality though is the fear of getting the disease that mom or dad had can actually affect the epigenomics and the potential reality of the occurrence.
Dr. Smith: Well, yes, because fear also does a lot of cell signal transduction that actually up-regulates the production of inflammatory markers, because any time you’re in fear, you’re in a protection mode.
KC: Wow. That’s fantastic. So it’s actually quite miraculous that oftentimes we don’t really inherit the disease; we inherit mama’s cookbook.
Dr. Smith: Right.
KC: Or the factors that actually bring about the disease.
Dr. Smith: There is one other piece, though, that we need to be very, very mindful of, is a woman from the time of conception throughout her pregnancy, the marks that she puts on her epigenome are definitely translatable to the kids. And it’s actually been said that what we eat today, particularly if you’re still having children, will affect your children for two or three, four generations.
KC: Absolutely. Fantastic.
Dr. Smith: So in essence, it is both. This epigenome definitely controls it. It is very malleable by lifestyle, diet, all the good things we talk about, but it can be somewhat locked in at the time of gestation. Now I think, being the optimist that I am, that if you come out and if you find out that mom is obese, and you have some trouble with it, then you’re going to have to work, maybe, life isn’t totally fair, that person’s going to have to work considerably harder than somebody else to reprogram the epigenome. But I know it works. It can work. You just have to work on it.
KC: That is fantastic. Leonard, you always bring us some amazing stuff. We sure hope that was enjoyable to you. We’re going to get more into how this plays out into your health in future segments. God bless you, and have a great day.
