ultimately the heart, lungs, brain, muscles and the rest of the body. In
doing so, your health is regulated by what would seem to be a prede-
termined set of plans. However, genes, along with their diverse set of
detailed instructions, are significantly influenced by the very foods
you eat, and at each meal. In fact, the whole process of aging — how
well we age and how long we live — is controlled throughout our
lives through the impact on genes by nutrition.
The foods we eat can actually turn on, or turn off specific genes,
and with it, detailed instructions regarding specific diseases. The bot-
tom line: A good diet turns off genes that cause disease, and a bad diet
turns on disease-causing genes. While we all have genes for diseases,
they act like a light switch — they can be turned on, or turned off. The
diet is like a finger controlling the switch. So what you eat — the qual-
ity and quantity of food at each meal — can dictate whether you turn
on a particular genetic switch for diabetes, for example. The same is
true for virtually all the problems that reduce quality of life, and for
the diseases that kill us. This also includes being overweight —
whether your parents were overfat or not isn’t the issue but rather
how and what you eat.
Many people use “genetics” as an excuse for their health prob-
lems — "my parents had this problem," "my grandfather had that
problem." This attempt to justify ill health is no longer valid.
Unfortunately, this defense is propagated throughout our culture,
with the media partly to blame. Headlines touting “research shows
addiction is genetic” or “obesity gene discovered” is a distortion of
the truth promoted to sell newspapers and magazines.
Let’s look at the facts. We may be predisposed to addiction or
obesity, predisposed to diabetes, heart disease, cancer or many other
problems, but if we become addicted, fat, diabetic etc., we are to
blame, not our genes.
Gene Exceptions
A handful of true genetic disorders are the exception to this rule, and
are rare. These include damage or other unwanted changes to genet-
ic materials that occur soon after fertilization (some of these changes
may even be part of the “natural selection” process humans continue
to experience). After fertilization when mom and dad’s cells share
their genetic materials and begin to divide, changes in the genetic
22 • IN FITNESS AND IN HEALTH