Has anyone here been keeping up with the research that's going on in the area of epigenitics? I happened to run across a show on PBS that was aired last night, called, "The Ghost in Your Genes", that dealt with that topic. I missed the first part of the show, but what I did see, totally captivated my attention. It was extremely fascinating, to say the least, since it was the first practical data that I had seen on the subject, and the evidence was very compelling.
According to Wikipedia:
Basically, epigenetics deals with how genes are switched on and off. What that means is that some of the health problems that you are experiencing today, may be due to some event that affected one or more of your ancestors, and it can occurr without following the patterns known to be attributible to the human genome, by current definitions. Conversely, if you live to be over 100, your longevity may be due to something that occurred during the life of one of your grandparents, or even great-grandparents, not because you, or any of your ancestors, were carrying a longevity gene. The effects of epigenetics can easly skip generations, so that even though your parents did not carry a certain gene that might enable a certain health issue, you might still inherit that effect from one of your grandparents, by means of one of the concepts of epigenetics.Epigenetics is a term in biology used today to refer to features such as chromatin and DNA modifications that are stable over rounds of cell division but do not involve changes in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism.[1] These epigenetic changes play a role in the process of cellular differentiation, allowing cells to stably maintain different characteristics despite containing the same genomic material. Epigenetic features are inherited when cells divide despite a lack of change in the DNA sequence itself and, although most of these features are considered dynamic over the course of development in multicellular organisms, some epigenetic features show transgenerational inheritance and are inherited from one generation to the next.
For example, the PBS show included research done on a small isolated Swedish community, where detailed health records have been kept for hundreds of years. Researchers determined, for example, that if a male had lived through a severe famine, (usually due to crop failure), prior to the age of 10, then his male grandchildren lived much longer than their corhorts, and much longer than their parents, or grandparents. The correlation was very high. I didn't take notes, but I'm thinking that it was something like around 85%. (Someone please correct me here, if I'm off with that statistic). IOW, a bad event caused a good effect in the third generation. On the other hand in the case of females who experienced those same famines, the effect on their grandchildren was negative, resulting in increased disease, again with a very high correlation.
Okay, so why am I posting this on an MC discussion board? Well, mostly because I can't help but wonder what event in our grandmothers' lives might have caused us to end up with MC. This is just wild speculation, but maybe the reason that cancer and so many other diseases are running at epidemic levels within our generation, is because of the severe hardships that our grandmothers suffered during WWII, when they had to deal with food rationing, various supply shortages, the loss of many sons, husbands, brothers, and fathers, and a general sense of hopelessness, due to the war. This was the first generation, I believe, where women also had to take on the difficult industrial jobs that were traditionally handled by men, because of a shortage in the workforce, and of course this work was in addition to their customary duties, (which entailed a heck of a lot more physically demanding work than today, due to the lack of so many of the appliances and conveniences that we have today). This had to be a very, very traumatic time in their lives.
I would point out, for example, that celiac disease, Crohn's disease, UC, MC, and various other GI diseases, seem to be most prevalent in countries whose residents suffered severely, either physically, or emotionally, during that war. I realize this is kind of a far-fetched idea at this point, but as research in this area proceeds, I have a hunch that a lot of mysteries will be resolved, concerning health issues, and health benefits.
Here is some info on the PBS show:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/genes/
The bottom line is, I think that this will eventually be shown to be the reason, for example, why even though a high percentage of people of European descent carry celiac genes, only a very small percentage of us ever actually present with the symptoms of gluten sensitivity, and/or MC, celiac sprue, Crohn's disease, UC, or whatever. IOW, we just happened to be the third generation descendants of women who experienced severely traumatic events, which affected their health, during their childhood.
Did anyone else happen to see that PBS show. Any thoughts?
Love,
Tex
