Here at The Spring Center for Natural Medicine, we are thrilled to help you reach your health goals naturally. This includes creating a customized food plan for you, recommending specific whole food supplements and remedies, and helping you remove all the toxic chemicals and heavy metals from your environment (cosmetics, personal care products, cleaning products, processed food…the list goes on). The article below published by Dr. Bruce West, Founder of the Health Alert/Immune Systems Inc. touches on the importance of these lifestyle changes in regards to how we understand genetics and disease.
Call us today at 512-445-7373 if you’re interested in scheduling an appointment for a health evaluation and seeing what food plan and whole food supplements will help you achieve better health!
Epigenetics: The Giant Hole in the Gene Theory
“The gene theory of disease headlines are dramatic and puzzling high-tech. The public is becoming hoodwinked into believing that frail and flawed genes are programming us all for disease and destruction. And if you think that medicine today is high-tech or expensive, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Despite the fact that most studies shoot the gene theory full of holes, you are continually being brainwashed into believing that new ‘gene scientists’ are going to solve all your health problems. Unfortunately, this is just not so.” -Health Alert, Vol. 10, No. 1
While the school of thought has cconsistently been that our DNA is unchangable, more evidence is surfacing that will surprise you about the expression of your genes.
Almost 20 years ago I wrote those words about the gene theory of disease. It is as true today as it was then because the gene experts are ignoring, and keeping you ignorant of, the elephant in the room – epigenetics. Simply put, epigenetics is the effect that your environment – prescription drugs, toxins, poisons, pollution, radiation, heavy metals, nutritional deficiencies, and more – has on your genes. Epigenetics is the science of how these environmental effects influence your genes to express normally or abnormally – producing health or disease.
There is no doubt that you may be born with certain inherited genes that can predict and cause health problems. But the odds are so much greater that, instead of inherited faulty genes, your environment – the things you eat, drink and are exposed to – is much more likely to affect your genes and your health. While an inherited faulty gene will cause problems, a normal gene that is damaged by poisons, toxins, radiation, nutritional deficiencies and more will express itself abnormally and can produce the same health problems as inherited faulty genes.
For example, Nigerians from Africa have the genetic marker (gene) for Alzheimer’s. These folks should all have Alzheimer’s but don’t. Epidemiologists tell us that the same Nigerians from Africa – who have the same genetic marker – who migrate to Indianapolis, Indiana, end up suffering from Alzheimer’s in large numbers. This is called epigenetics. In this case the new diet, environment, drugs, whatever it is in Indianapolis, influences the Alzheimer’s gene to express itself abnormally, thus causing Alzheimer’s.
So what does this mean to you? It means that if you have given up on good health because your mother and grandmother had heart disease, or your father had diabetes, or your doctor said you gto the wrong genes, you are being hoodwinked. Don’t sell the farm yet. If the gene theory were 100% true, the epidemiologists’ findings about the Nigerians would be impossible.
Epigenetics of Cervical Cancer
Epigenetics also means that gene doctors are not going to solve all our health problems with gene therapies and gene surgeries. If you are doing something that is causing your genes to express unnaturally, that must be resolved in order to overcome “genetic” disease. For many women, cervical cancer is considered a genetic disease. It is surmised that a “flawed gene” problem causes the blueprint that makes cervical cells go awry and become cancerous. So the future for any woman with flawed-gene problem would be abnormal cervical cells at best and cervical cancer at worst. What is overlooked is the epigenetics of cervical cancer.
Somehow we’ve been able to help hundreds of women with the flawed gene problem regain and retain normal cervical cells. We didn’t use gene therapy to correct the underlying blueprint that is pumping out these abnormal cells. Instead, we addressed the epigenetics of the disease – we removed the offending, harmful fats and oils in the diet and replaced them with healthy omega-3 fatty acids. We replaced synthetic, chemical nutritional supplements with whole-food nutritional complexes like the whole vitamin A, C and D complexes in order to resolve “gene-bending” nutritional deficiencies. And somehow, though never mentioned in medicine, by correcting the epigenetics of cervical disease, these women were able to resolve their problem at the blueprint level– the DNA/gene level – and produce normal, healthy cervical cells.
Epigenetics: The Key to Healthy Genes
You may not hear about this anywhere else in your lifetime! And the reasons are simple. 1) The big money is in the gene theory of disease. 2) Lots of epigenetic damage is caused by our health environment. That means prescription drugs, vaccines, pesticides, poisons, toxins, nuclear radiation, and bad food are major epigenetic factors that cause damage. Most of us can all remember the horror of thalidomide – a prescription drug whose toxic effects cause severe epigenetic damage and thousands of birth defects. 3) Nutritional deficiencies or imbalances are major causes of epigenetic damage and “genetic disease.”
So to embrace the field of epigenetics, medicine would need to admit that their treatments, foods, chemicals and even synthetic supplements are part of the cause of the problem. And that proper nutrition and real supplements are part of the cure. That is not likely to happen. But for you to get well down to the blueprint/gene/DNA level, you need to understand and address epigenetics.
Inherited Genes or Inherited Habits?
Jane’s was a diabetic mom who led the typical American lifestyle, including receiving typical medical care. She bottle-fed her babies in the ’60s. They were all fully and completely vaccinated. They were exposed to dozens of doses of antibiotics. And when it came to their diet, they were fed the newest breath through concoctions out of boxes and packages produced by junk-food science. After all,l these people were geniuses. When Jane’s daughter Same came to me at age 40, we soon learned that she had followed exactly in mom’s footsteps. And Sam’s doctor was not surprised when Same because diabetic because, after all, she inherited her mom’s genes.
When it comes to situations like Sam, I’m not afraid to ask the question that no other doctor will ask. Did Sam inherit mom’s genes or did she inherit mom’s bad habits? Well, there is little doubt that some people do inherit specific gene faults. But after 35 years in this business, it is obvious that many more people inherit the epigenetics of their parents.
With Sam, we completely undid her old habits and created an entirely new lifestyle. We started with a whole-foods diet (excluding anything out of a package), incorporated exercise, introduced whole-food nutritional complexes to resolve gene-bending nutritional deficiencies, evaluated her prescription drug intake, taught her how to beat health problems for herself and her kids without antibiotics, and quite simply executed a lifestyle makeover – 100% opposite from mom’s.
It took a while, but once the epigenetics of her diabetes were turned favorable, she got better, right down to the blueprint level of her cells – proving that in this case at least, the gene theory of disease was nonsense. And when it comes to the future of medicine – which will attempt to exalt gene therapy – you need to stay on your toes. Epigenetics will not be mentioned. You will need to feed your genes what they need and remove the poisons that damage them. And in most cases, it is pretty easy. Just do what Sam did.
Epigenetics and Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders
Some of the most devastating health problems, involve mental, emotional and behavioral disorders. These include depression, schizophrenia, autism, and bipolar among others. If you or one or more of your loved ones is suffering these problems, you should not try to treat these on your own. Nor should you rely on psychiatric drugs. In most cases, you can be at least helped by normalizing your environment – removing the poisons, eating whole foods, and using proper supplements. Thanks to the pioneering work of William J. Walsh, PhD, we have been able to see real break throughs in mental and emotional problems, primarily by using nutrients instead of drugs to influence epigenetics. Dr. Walsh is in the same category as Carl Pfeiffer, PhD, and others. I met Dr. Pfeiffer decades ago in Princeton, New Jersey, where he had a world-famous clinic that specialized in mental problems and nutrition. He was the first to be able to help people with schizophrenia without drugs.
Now deceased, Dr. Pfeiffer was considered the 31 nutritional scientist in the world in the 1970’s. And when it comes to mental and emotional disorders and nutrition, Dr. Walsh is taking his place in our more modern times. Dr. Walsh maintains a website where you can access information about epigenetics and mental disorders, as well as find doctors who are trained to detect nutritional deficiencies that can cause epitgenetic mental problems. His site is www.walshinstitute.org.
For serious mental and emotional problems, you can become a patient at the North Carolina Outreach Clinic. This is a training clinic where physicians are trained to locate, pinpoint, and treat nutritional deficiencies that can influence epigenetics and mental health. The Outreach Clinic does not always have training sessions going on. And if non are available, you can get in touch with Mensah Medical. Albert Mensah is trained in epigenetics and sees patients at his main office 25 miles outside of Chicago, as well as twice a year at his Outreach Clinics in Scottsdale AZ, Garden Grove CA, Burlingame CA and Annapolis MD. Dr. Albert Mensah and Judith Bowman, MD, work at these clinics and have had experience working and training with Dr. Walsh as well as Dr. Pfeiffer. Their website is www.mensahmedical.com. Contact information for appointments can be made at terri@mensahmedical.com (or call 630-256-8308).
In the end, super high-tech, super-expensive, and super-confusing gene therapy is not going to solve the world’s health problems. If you suspect bad genes as the cause of your health problems, consider normalizing the epigenetic effect first, before you embark on a lifetime of prescription of drugs, gene therapies, or even gene surgery. Remember – did you inherit your family’s genes, or their bad habits?