The study of epigenetics has shown that our environment has a huge impact upon how genes are expressed. Thus, our health can be devastated or restored, depending on the types of stressors in our life. For this reason, epigenetics provides a case for conviction. However, any negative effects can be countered, and even overpowered, with the truth that we can dictate how we respond to our environment. When we choose to be proactive, we walk in hope and grow in health.
To further establish this hope, I will highlight how our environment governs our heritage and our legacy of health.
First, our epigenome (control center for our genes) is influenced by our parents’ environment. This is because the environment that influenced their epigenome and thus their genes, impacted the vulnerability of our genes to our current environment. For example, if parents eat a diet devastating to their blood sugar system, they may weaken their health and develop diabetes. This has the potential to influence their offspring's’ gene vulnerability to diabetes. On the contrary, if parents choose whole foods over processed ingredients, they will equip their body with robust gene health. Additionally, a mother’s lifestyle during pregnancy impacts the epigenome of her developing baby. And, because a female baby's lifetime supply of eggs is created when she's growing in her mother's womb, it can also impact these eggs, and eventually the children they may become. In this way, the activity of the pregnant mother can even touch the lives of her grandchildren.
This provides conviction for parents to eat healthy, with the hope that by doing so, they will empower their children’s health. However, regardless of the heritage of health we’ve received from our parents, we now have the opportunity to build our own legacy of health.
I have laid the groundwork in previous writings for a thriving lifestyle. [1] We greatly determine our level of health by our habits of nutrition, sleep, exercise, recreation, relationships (emotional health), and life purpose (spiritual health), etc. Know that such choices can determine not only our gene expression and the health of our offspring, but may affect multiple generations! If bearing children is not applicable, do not think that your impact on the next generation has ceased. On the contrary, you can always be a voice for the restoration of health in today’s culture. You do this primarily by example. As people watch the way you “walk,” they are impacted by the level of freedom they see in your health.
We are influenced by our past, but not bound by it. Allow the conviction of epigenetics to motivate you to execute change for yourself, and those you love.
[1] https://www.thrivinghealthny.com/blog-1/category/Building%20a%20Thriving%20Lifestyle
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