Archived News of the Week

Genes, Dental Implants, Nurdles, Vitamin D and Bleu Cheese

"Genes are not activated until something triggers them. The cell's operations are primarily molded by its interaction with the environment." Bruce Lipton: Biology of Belief.

Maybe 4 years ago, I read an article about longevity which said that perhaps as little as 4% of our longevity had to do with our parents and grandparents. That totally bummed me out, because I had been casually confident of my living a long time inasmuch as my grandfather lived to be 93 and my Great Aunt Teddy, from what I understand, had a daily exercise regime including push-ups and running plus she took "huge smelly vitamins" (a quote from my mother) until she died in her sleep at 102. Now I guess I have to take a bit more responsibility for my desired long life.

When genome mapping first started happening a few years ago, I became concerned about a lot of things, like: 1) What would the insurance industry do? How would they regulate coverage with known genetic problems? 2) What about patients? Would they feel hopeless if they found out that they had a serious health predisposition? What would or could they do about it?

3) In a more religious/socio/political arena, does this mean that eugenics and selective breeding is rearing its ugly head - again? Obviously the rich could get their genes manicured more readily than the poor and those with money could even select the genes and sex of their children. Isn't this tampering with God's will and plan for every human being? Or is God's will creating the ability to gene map?

4) This could create a huge gene-snipping medical industry. "Hey, Doc, snip out my heart disease gene, huh? Or, my alcoholic gene? Or my bipolar gene? Or my hangnail gene?" It could get ridiculous. 5) Finally, who would control all this? We all know how lame the FDA is and how corrupt Big Pharma is, so they won't do. Maybe a Big Brother underground consortium consisting of a dozen old guys who hold 99% of the world's wealth? Yeah, that's the ticket.

Well, not to fear. I recently read that the now grumpy gene guys were not having the results they intended and that genes were not necessarily creating the illnesses they were supposed to create. Bad genes! Defying science like that! As you and I both know, our health and lack thereof has a lot to do with our intention, our environment, what we feed our bodies, the air we breathe, how toxic we are, whether we drink or smoke and our levels of inflammation. These things all affect our epigenome which is the part of our gene history that we can affect. So, yes, your thoughts can affect your health.

I am clear that if we deeply respect our body temples - after all, if we didn't have our body temple where would our Spirit live in this lifetime? - we are already on the path to wonderful health and happiness despite what our flawed genomes may imply. "The intelligence encoded is having Its way - as blood, as bone, as muscle, as eyeball. . . Let's decide mindfully to support our evolutionary unveiling of the inherent magnificence residing at the very core of every aspect of our being." (The Rev. Michael Beckwith)

Dental Implants: Be careful with this. They are not as benign as you may think. A typical dental implant is made of pure titanium and/or a titanium alloy and by "osseointegration" is fused to the jaw bone. But, titanium releases metal ions into your mouth 24 hours a day and chronic exposure may trigger inflammation, allergies, autoimmune disease and even cancer in susceptible people. A titanium implant can also cause oral galvanism, i.e. it creates an electric current which makes your mouth into a small electrical generator, buzzing in your head day in and day out, picking up country-western stations and Wal-Mart ads. What can you do? Try really hard to keep your teeth but if you can't, either 1) get a bridge or 2) explore high-strength ceramic implants or metal-free zirconium implants.

Nurdles: By now we have all heard of that scary plastic repository in the Pacific Ocean called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It starts about 500 miles west of the California coast, goes past Hawaii and almost to Japan. It contains 1 million tons of debris and it is claimed to be as big as the entire United States. Nurdles is the name given to the trillions of tiny plastic pieces that float in this plastic hell. Do your part. Don't buy plastic and if you do, dispose of it responsibly. I'm quite sure that every single one of us has at least 20,000 nurdles with our name on it. We don't want any more.

Vitamin D: There is so much to say about this important hormone, but I will be brief. You want your D levels measured by a blood test called 25-hydroxyvitamin D3. You want your levels to be between 60 and 80, which is much higher than current lab norms. The latest research says that you need 35 iu's of D per pound of body weight daily for prevention, and more if you need to raise your levels. This means that at 112 pounds, I would need (and l do) to take around 4,000 iu's daily to maintain my level of 71. I have also heard that Quest Labs is a bit off on their D tests and we need to take their total and divide it by 1.3 which will give us the "real" D level.

Bleu Cheeses: I didn't know this but most bleu cheeses contain wheat. For those of us who are gluten intolerant, there are three bleus that have no wheat: Bel Gioso, Pt. Reyes and Rosenborg.

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