Lifestyle Choices to Transform Your Gene Activity

By Deepak Chopra, MD and Rudolph E. Tanzi, PhD

When people think about genes, they tend to apply the words good or bad to them. Someone with talent or unusual beauty "must have good genes," we say. And ourselves? Depending on how your life is going, you may thank your genes or feel victimized by them. Most of the time, however, the average person will assume that their genes are a mixture of good and bad elements.

Yet this kind of thinking seriously misrepresents how genes work.

Only about 5% of disease-related gene mutations are fully penetrant, the terms geneticists apply when a gene directly causes a disorder. Otherwise, 95% of genes linked to disorders act as an influence. They can sway one way or another, depending on other factors.

Your biology doesn't spell your destiny. You have many choices, because "other factors" include a vast range of influences, including diet, exercise, stress management, and emotional events we take as everyday occurrences.

These influences don't change the genes you were born with, which remain the same all your life. Instead, what changes is genetic activity, meaning the hundreds of proteins, enzymes, and other chemicals that regulate the cell. As the cell thrives, so does the entire body, and so do you.

In our book, Super Genes, we discuss how to make the best choices in six areas of mind-body lifestyle: Diet, stress, exercise, sleep, meditation, and emotions.

Our approach aims to overcome the chief problem with lifestyle changes: compliance. Millions of people have read all the information on positive lifestyle changes and resolve to carry them out, only to find after a while that they've lapsed back into their old habits. (For example, it is estimated that only 2% of dieters manage to keep off 5 lbs. of weight loss for five years.) Our answer is to give a menu of easy choices in each of the six areas, asking that you stick with each easy choice before you move on to more difficult ones.

You only need to pick one change and make it last a month before picking the next change. Feel free to choose any of the six areas; we don't advise doubling up by going for more than one area, since this increases the risk of non-compliance. In the book, we give over a dozen choices in each area, but in this limited space, we can only give you a sampling.

Diet

Diet has assumed new importance because of the microbiome (intestinal microbes) that not only digests food but constitute a vast genetic component of the body. Research is showing that toxicity in the microbiome, especially discharges that leak into the bloodstream, are a major cause of inflammation.

• Add foods with soluble fiber to your breakfast (e.g., oatmeal, pulpy orange juice, bran cereal, bananas, a fruit smoothie made from unpeeled fruits).
• Eat a side salad with lunch or dinner (preferably both).
• Consume probiotic foods once a day (e.g., active yogurt, kefir, pickles, sauerkraut, and kimchi) to nourish the microbial population in your digestive tract.
• Eat fatty fish at least twice a week (e.g., fresh salmon, mackerel, and tuna, canned or fresh sardines).
• For vegetarians, consider healthy protein sources such as soy, tempeh, and mycoprotein.

Stress

The importance of stress as a negative factor is that it disrupts the proper functioning of cells by introducing hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that are naturally meant to be temporary, lasting only a few minutes when threat is sensed by the brain. In modern life, however, low-level chronic stress leads to cellular distortions that researchers believe are engraved as epigenetic markers, and these can be permanent or at least long-lasting.

• Decrease background noise and distractions at work.
• Avoid multitasking. Deal with one thing at a time.
• Stop being the cause of someone else’s stress.
• Vary your daily activity, including time out and downtime.

Exercise

The most important factor in exercise isn’t its intensity but simply developing the habit of staying in motion. The risk factors associated with a sedentary lifestyle, in terms of type 2 diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular health, start at the genetic level. This also means that the benefits of exercise may start very early in a person’s life and need to be maintained through our entire lifespan.

• Get up and move around once an hour.
• When taking an elevator, take the stairs to the second floor before pressing the button.
• Do your own housework instead of hiring a cleaner.
• Take a brisk walk after dinner.

Sleep

DNA controls bodily rhythms in dozens of ways—our bodies don’t run on one clock but many, all built into the cell’s genetic programming. The master rhythm that sets all the others appears more and more to be sleep. Without a good night’s sleep, brain activity and hormonal balances are quickly thrown off, and conditions that seem far removed from sleep, such as obesity, are worsened. In itself, sleep is also a major reducer of stress.

• Make your bedroom as dark as possible. Blackout shades are best. If total darkness is impossible, wear a sleep mask.
• Make your bedroom as quiet as possible. If you can’t achieve perfect silence, wear ear plugs. These are also advisable if early-morning noises wake you up.
• Make sure your bedroom is comfortably warm and draft free.
• Take a warm bath before bedtime.

Meditation

After four decades of research into the mind-body connection, the health benefits of meditation have been abundantly proven. The new frontier is genetic, and ongoing studies, including at the Chopra Center, are demonstrating that meditation brings benefits right down to the cellular and genetic level. We must realize that our bodies are as aware of what we are experiencing as we are, except that their awareness exists in terms of chemicals. Meditation increases the body’s awareness by bringing positive chemical activity at the genetic level.

• Take 10 minutes at lunchtime to sit alone with eyes closed.
• Learn a simple breath meditation for use 10 minutes morning and evening
• Find a friend to meditate with.
• Take inward time whenever you find it helpful, at least once a day.

Emotions

Emotions are the most elusive aspect of the mind-body system to investigate, for two reasons. First, they are fleeting; second, their chemical signature is extremely complex. Extreme emotional upset leads to a holistic reaction in the body, because trillions of cells are eavesdropping on our everyday experience. Medical science cannot fine tune such vast, complex interactions between brain and body, each of which has genetic implications in terms of chemical output and markers on the DNA through epigenetics. It’s up to each of us to find a path of healthy positive emotions ourselves.

• Write down five specific things that make you happy. On a daily basis, consciously do one of them.
• Express gratitude for one thing a day.
• Express appreciation for one person every day.
• Spend more time with people who are happy and less time with people who aren’t.

As you adopt these simple habits, they reinforce your ability to adopt more, and then to move on to choices that might be more challenging, such as more vigorous, regular exercise or a vegetarian diet. The whole point is to start a conscious conversation with your genes--that's the breakthrough which will make a huge impact on your wellbeing for years to come.

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of Jiyo and The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are Super Genes co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. www.deepakchopra.com 

Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D. is the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University and serves as Co-Director of the Institute for Brain Health and Vice Chair of Neurology at Mass. General Hospital. Dr. Tanzi is the co-author with Deepak Chopra of the New York Times bestseller, Super Brain and Super Genes. He is also an internationally acclaimed expert on Alzheimer disease genetics and prevention. He was included in TIME Magazine's "TIME 100 Most Influential People in the World".