Tova Sardot
At the core I am a scientist, and the more I delve into the inner workings of the body and the search for where disease and dysfunction begin the scale has gotten quite small… down to about 2 nanometers- the width of your DNA double helix. A nanometer is 1 billionth of a meter and comes from the Greek word for “dwarf”. These cellular dwarfs drive literally everything that is happening in your body starting with each cell and expanding out to every system and function you have. And you are either giving these dwarfs exactly what then need to thrive or you are not…. and if you haven’t had the test done and the data interpreted you are not in an optimized state. More on that in a bit, let’s talk about your DNA.
Inside each nucleus of each cell lives your DNA, the recipe for nearly everything your body is capable of…it all starts here. We often see images of DNA wound into chromosomes but this is not really what it looks like in the cell…. It looks more like spaghetti.
Think about this – each cell contains about 2 meters of noodles in a nucleus bowl and how accessible the strands are determines how optimized your body functions are.
This is where epigenetics comes in. A look at your epigenetics is a look at how accessible the DNA strands are to be ‘read’. If your genes are not being read fully, this can mean that you are missing important functions that have many health implications. Your epigenome (yes, this is becoming a thing) has 2 different levels – what you have acquired during this lifetime and what your ancestors passed down to you. Your acquired modifications have to do with diet, lifestyle, emotions, and environmental factors; while your inherited epigenetics have to do with adaptations your ancestors had to make due to stressors in the environment. That’s the important part – your epigenome making changes in response to your environment, just like your ancestors were! For example, the epigenetic effects of famine have been studied and it turns out that children that were in utero during serious nutritional deficits have some genes turned off leading to much higher occurrences of obesity, diabetes and schizophrenia (1). These transgenerational epigenetic changes are more difficult to influence but the good news is the ones that have been acquired over your lifetime can be changed, optimized and lead you to your best self.
What do we test and how does it work? We look at your genetics by doing a cheek swab test and get a list of over 750,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)! We optimize your SNPs by looking at 6 areas – stress, sleep, nutrition, hormones, athletic performance and supplements, all leading you to improved function from the very foundation. This personalized approach can not be matched by other therapies because it is based on your specific programming. It is a real game changer!
Come learn more at my talk at Natura Tuesday, March 17th at 12 pm!
https://www.nytimes.com/…/31/science/dutch-famine-genes.html