Genetics and Epigenetics

Know that the balance of the stress response and the relaxation response is a determinant of your overall health.

Your brain has a job. The brain’s job is to take in information from the surroundings and keep you safe. We take in information through our 5 senses. We see something, smell something, hear something, taste something or feel something and that stimuli travels directly to our amygdala. As quick as lightening, our brain pulls from our past experiences or ‘buckets’ the experience to be similar to something we have experienced in the past and projects into the future that this is something that we trust as something we love or something we fear. This patterned reaction of ‘knowing’ that something should be loved or feared is most significantly programmed in our brains starting in our 3^rd trimester of being and continues until about age 7 years. During this crucial time period, we are essentially in an altered state of consciousness; our brains in theta waveform, imprinting learned programming into our brains. This bank of information develops themes or ‘buckets’ in which we categorize stimuli and experiences as something to love or fear. 95% of our brain processes are automatic reactions and follow this pattern In an average of only 5% of the time do we engage the functionality of the higher brain, the pre-frontal cortex, to help us determine our level of safety.

When experiencing the stress response or the relaxation response, our bodies release substances into the bloodstream that bathe our cells in an environment that is healthy or unhealthy. If you were indeed in danger and needed the chemical reaction of the stress response to save your life, then the risk to your cells of being in a severe stress response is worth it. But if your stress response is out of proportion to the actual risk to your health; it is time for us to reexamine how we are reacting to stimuli and find ways to balance the environment in which our cells are living so that the human organism can experience optimal health.

All of the 37 trillion cells that make up our bodies all start out as stem cells with a generic group of DNA that hardwires your body to develop in a certain way. Hair color, eye color, male/female are all hardwired into these stem cells. Whether this cell develops into skin cells or bone cells or liver cells simply relies on the environment that the cell is exposed to. If you put a stem cell into a petri dish full of heart cells, the stem cell with evolve into a heart cell. Similarly, if, within the culture or belief systems during your upbringing, you were programmed to believe that ‘everyone in our family dies of cancer’, ‘you’re build is just like your mother’s side’ or ‘the shape of your fingers look just like aunt Betty’s; you believe that must have rheumatoid arthritis. Every twinge of discomfort or slight variation in what we deem as ‘normal’ insights a sense of fear. Our cells ultimately respond with a stress or relaxation response highly dependent on how you were programmed to react 95% of the time bypassing our higher brain’s ability to use reason and logic as a response. These variations that happen in the environment of the DNA is the determinant of how that cell ultimately expresses itself. If the cell is exposed to an environment filled with stress hormones, toxins and carcinogens the cell’s DNA are broken the cell expressed itself as unhealthy. If the cell’s DNA are exposed to serotonin, melatonin, endorphins and balanced nutrition with substances that have not been altered to the point of being unrecognizable the DNA expressed itself as a healthy cell.

Human cells have a lifespan; constantly breaking down and replicating themselves creating new cells with the same DNA. If you can change the environment that your DNA are exposed to for a matter of a few short weeks to months, your cells will only remember to create the healthiest versions of themselves and your human organism will experience optimal health.