The Agouti mice that are shown here, are very different from one another. Different because though they come from the same genetics, the don’t share the same genetic expression. Different because one carries significant risk of prematuer death, while the other does not, and it is all because of the pursuit of health.
Agouti mice with the same genetics
The excerpts that I am going to pull for this article, were publishd online for Discover magazine, November 22, 2006. I remember we had the full article sitting in our office that December, and we were getting pulled deeper and deeper into the understanding of how genes work. These are the underlying reasons why I feel someone stands a 90% better chance against cancer or heart disease with us leading the way.
I trust that God has given me this purpose, and that we are on purpose right now. Take a look at the amazing changes that took place because of a diet change! Imagine coupling that with all of the Five Essentials of health (wondering what those are… stay tuned more often and you will see all five covered), how amazing the changes could be!
“Back in 2000, Randy Jirtle, a professor of radiation oncology at Duke University, and his postdoctoral
student Robert Waterland designed a groundbreaking genetic experiment that was simplicity itself.
They started with pairs of fat yellow mice known to scientists as agouti mice, so called because they
carry a particular gene—the agouti gene—that in addition to making the rodents ravenous and yellow
renders them prone to cancer and diabetes. Jirtle and Waterland set about to see if they could change
the unfortunate genetic legacy of these little creatures.
Typically, when agouti mice breed, most of the offspring are identical to the parents: just as yellow, fat
as pincushions, and susceptible to life-shortening disease. The parent mice in Jirtle and Waterland’s
experiment, however, produced a majority of offspring that looked altogether different. These young
mice were slender and mousy brown. Moreover, they did not display their parents’ susceptibility to
cancer and diabetes and lived to a spry old age. The effects of the agouti gene had been virtually erased.”
Such an amazing change, and look at how they helped to inspire that change.
“Remarkably, the researchers effected this transformation without altering a single letter of the mouse’s
DNA. Their approach instead was radically straightforward—they changed the moms’ diet. Starting just
before conception, Jirtle and Waterland fed a test group of mother mice a diet rich in methyl donors,
small chemical clusters that can attach to a gene and turn it off. These molecules are common in the
environment and are found in many foods, including onions, garlic, beets, and in the food supplements
often given to pregnant women. After being consumed by the mothers, the methyl donors worked their
way into the developing embryos’ chromosomes and onto the critical agouti gene. The mothers passed
along the agouti gene to their children intact, but thanks to their methyl-rich pregnancy diet, they hadadded to the gene a chemical switch that dimmed the gene’s deleterious effects.”
“…The even greater surprise is the recent discovery that epigenetic signals
from the environment can be passed on from one generation to the next,
sometimes for several generations, without changing a single gene
sequence. It’s well established, of course, that environmental effects like
radiation, which alter the genetic sequences in a sex cell’s DNA, can leave a
mark on subsequent generations”
The power of your genetic code is amazing, but it depends on health. Do you know if you are eating right? I mean do you know it so well you could defend it and stand by your choices?
The Body By God Challenge is perhaps the absolute best challenge we teach to get all components right, and it starts today! Get on board, and be blessed!
http://www.healthsprout.com/events/body-by-god-40-day-challenge/