I recently was travelling in  Nepal and discussion around the dinner table turned to health, as it was likely to do, as Julie and I are vegan and healthy, so in some ways this is a challenge for people.  A lot of people have a lot of chronic illnesses and take a lot of medication, or their close family members are in this camp-even amongst people who are walking in Nepal.  Just being  vegan and healthy can be taken as a criticism of them or  make people feel on the back foot, as they may take the implication that  their illness is their fault.   Whilst the biggest contact with the environment that anyone has is through the lining of their stomach, it is perfectly normal in this society to eat badly, so there is no personal failing involved in doing so.

During this dinner conversation I did make a remark, which was probably unwise, when one member of the group stated, eating scallops cooked in bacon fat, from the morning eggs and bacon was to “die for”.   I said, that ironically that may well be the  case!   He rightly pointed out he was 75 and I was yet to get there.    Another member of the party weighed into the debate, finding out the age that my parents died, which was mid-70’s stating that “it didn’t look too good for me then!”     This would be true if genetics were destiny, which in the case of the illnesses common in Australia, that are responsible for killing the most people and reducing the quality of life of the most people, is certainly not the case.

These illnesses doing the most damage are diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, cancer and lung problems.    The genes that influence  these things are not genes like the genes for eye colour or getting Huntingdon’s Chorea-these genes are dictators, you have the gene, you have the eye colour or the disease.   The genes that influence our most common diseases, causing the most pain and suffering are heavily influenced by environment-what you eat.  Every mouthful we eat affects how our genes that we are stuck with are expressed: that is, how much influence they have over our health.  What we eat can increase the activity of some genes and decrease the activity of some others.   Everybody  knows that the outcome for a gene, relates to it’s interaction with the environment.  This is how natural selection works-those genes which fit with the environment the best have more chance of being passed on to the next generation, by the species surviving and procreating.  What is not so well known, is that the environment affects how that gene is expressed or how much it is active, by that species interaction with the environment during its lifetime.   Genes are not set in stone at birth  and will continue to act like that over our lifetime: they respond to the environment they are in and the biggest interaction with the environment, is through our stomachs and the food we eat.

My case example, proves nothing but it may illustrate the point.  My blood pressure in January this year was 126/80(first number is pressure immediately after the heart pumps and second number is pressure immediately before it pumps again).   This blood pressure is high but not seriously so.  In my 30’s ( I am now 60) my  blood pressure was 140’s top figure and I can’t remember the bottom figure.  I was vegetarian but like a lot of vegetarians I ate a lot of dairy: milk, full cream yoghurt and cheese.  Both of my brothers have high blood pressure and eat a normal western diet.  I have been a vegan for around 10- 12 years.   I haven’t had the genetic testing but it seems likely that all three of us brothers have a genetic predisposition to high blood pressure.  At least for the last ten years I have not been supplying the right environment for the genes responsible for  my predisposition to be expressed, at least to the degree that it would have been otherwise.

The direction we are going in healthcare( disease mongering?) at the moment in terms of genetic testing is part  of the high tech ‘solutions’ that we are applying to health, which are incredibly expensive and will prove to be a dead end.  All they have achieved so far is enabling sick people to live longer and often longer with an impaired quality of life.   The other thing this approach achieves is to create more patients, as people can become a part of the  sickness industry even before they have any symptoms or anywhere near any symptoms.

Genetic testing is pursuing disease rather than pursuing health.  Pursuing health is easy and free: get out in the sunshine, sleep well at night time, eat well and move.  Pursuing disease is expensive and is the realm of experts and takes us further down the path of the patient as the passive recipient of care.   The solutions provided by the sickness industry to your perceived level of genetic risk to a disease will be what the sickness(health) industry provides: medication and surgery.

For information on how to effect the expression of your genes by exercise and what you eat, see, “Turn off the fat g enes:the revolutionary guide to losing weight” by Neal Barnard from PCRM(see link in side bar)