I’ve had a number of discussions with clients as well as attendees of recent workshops about whether their illness is genetic. According to Dr. Russell Jaffe MD, PhD, CCN, FASCP, FACN, FAMLI, FRSM, only 8% of illness is genetic. I know what YOUR doctor said but I’m going to take Dr. Jaffe’s word for it. He’s WAY smarter than me and WAY smarter than your doctor.
Could you be one of those minority 8% of people with a truly genetic ailment? Sure, but 92% of time, you’re not. You’re not that special. Neither am I. Just because your doctor can’t figure out what’s wrong with you or has said, “There’s nothing more we can do” doesn’t mean you are part of the 8% and that you have an incurable ailment.
What it means is that your doctor doesn’t have the right tools, thought patterns, or small enough ego to look outside of a diagnostic manual provided by the pharmaceutical industry.
Your “disease” is not genetic if your ailment or diagnosis was not evident at birth. Down’s Syndrome is evident at birth. Sickle Cell Anemia is always there. No matter how clean your lifestyle, it won’t change the expression of those genetics. I could argue that living a clean lifestyle will enhance the health outcomes but it won’t change the expression itself. But not all ailments at birth are genetic. Much of the disease and dysfunction we see in kids today can have roots from being in the womb. That’s a different topic for another time.
Your DNA is like a gun. In order for that gun to be used, there has to be influence from an outside source for it to fire. Could that gun have a faulty firing pin and fire hap hazardously without warning? Sure, but it’s extremely rare. I’m guessing since I don’t own or carry a gun. I just surround myself with lots of people that do.
When a person picks up a gun, there is intent behind that person to use the gun in a specific manner. It can be beneficial or it can be detrimental. But no matter the usage, it’s not the gun’s fault. The gun has certain instructions on how to be loaded, cleaned, fired, and stored. But it can’t do it all by itself.
How you express health or disease is no different. Your DNA has the code for you to live a great, healthy, and abundant life for 120 years. It has enough cell divisions programmed into the blue print of your cells to last you triple digits of life in years.
Your DNA also has certain requirements to maintain health. When those requirements are not met, the DNA can switch the program to change your physiology. You can react with things like high blood pressure, high blood sugars, increase clotting, and blood vessel constriction to buy you enough time so you can change your patterns and provide the DNA what it requires.
In fact, your DNA isn’t programmed for disease. It’s programmed to buy you enough time in the immediate or it’s programmed to sustain life and build a legacy. Your decisions will determine which program your DNA will express.
Your DNA isn't programmed for disease. It's programmed to buy you enough time for immediate survival or to build a legacy later. Your choices determine which is expressed. Click To TweetIf you are in real, actual danger like someone with a loaded gun walking up to you and pointing it at your head, you better be grateful that your heart rate can race, that you can sky rocket your blood sugars, that you can tense your muscles, and that you increase your sensitivity to your surroundings. This preps you to buy enough time until the shooter can be apprehended. They are not symptoms of disease. They are expressions of protection.
The problem is that most people have a life full of perceived danger. They aren’t real dangers like an angry shooter, no matter how much the news wants to make you think there’s a shooter around every corner. They are things like getting cut off in traffic. They are things like a bowl of cereal, toast, and orange juice for breakfast. They are things like sending out 250 texts each day. They are things like comparing the worst part of your body to someone else’s best. Our daily life is filled with minute by minute decisions that don’t meet our DNA requirements…if we let it happen.
When those DNA requirements aren’t met, the body stays in the ‘buying you enough time’ physiology. You do this long enough and the cells get tired. You do this long enough and the nervous system thinks that’s the new normal and sets a new default setting for your life experiences. You do this long enough and the symptoms start creeping up silently at first like changes in your lab work. Then physical symptoms arise. Then you go to the doctor and because you’ve never had this before in your life and because you “eat right and exercise” according to lobby funded government recommendations you doctor looks at you and says, “I don’t know why this happened, it must be genetic.”
Then the doctor starts asking about your family history. What do you know? Mom, dad, or some grandparent had the exact same thing. But did the doctor ask if mom, dad, or some grandparent had the same hectic, stress-filled, deficient and toxic life like you do? Nope. Why? Because there’s no drug that can fill the gap of a movement deficiency. There’s no drug that can fill the gap of a relationship toxicity. There’s no drug that can create forgiveness. There’s no drug that creates a nutritional sufficiency. There’s no drug that shields you from the 80,000 industrial chemicals used in our country.
Your health outcomes, 92% of the time, depend on your daily choices. Whether you choose to accept that and take responsibility to look outside of a pill bottle for a solution to your health woes it also a choice. It’s the accumulation of those choices that creates your outcome. Health and disease are not events, they are processes. The fact that you felt great and functioned well for 50 years of life before “falling apart” is a testament and social proof to the instructional blueprint coded within your DNA. You used and abused your body for decades and it still keeps going.
If you want to continue to play the victim, that’s a choice. But one question, “how’s that working for you?” If you want to make a change then start looking at systems instead of symptoms and origins rather than organs. Got questions? I have answers.