Your genes are not your destiny. While your DNA plays a significant role in your health, your behaviors and environment, including your diet, have a profound impact on how those genes are expressed. Epigenetics, the study of how these factors influence gene activity without altering the DNA sequence itself, is revolutionizing our understanding of health and disease. This article explores the fascinating relationship between epigenetics and diet, revealing how the foods you eat can literally change the way your genes work.
Understanding Epigenetics: The Software to Your DNA Hardware
Think of your DNA as the hardware and your lifestyle choices as the software that runs it. Gene expression refers to the process of making proteins using the instructions from genes. Epigenetics refers to how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. While changes to the genes (mutations) can change the protein that is made, epigenetic changes affect gene expression to turn genes "on" and "off." This can mean that genes make proteins in cells and tissues where or when they normally would not, or that genes don't make proteins where and when they normally would.
Epigenetic changes begin even before birth, as all your cells have the same genes but function differently. For example, nerve cells and muscle cells have the same DNA, but nerve cells transport information while muscle cells aid in movement. These epigenetic changes continue throughout life, influenced by factors like diet, environmental exposures, and even disease.
Mechanisms of Epigenetic Change
Environmental factors can cause epigenetic changes in several ways, with DNA methylation being one of the most common. DNA methylation involves adding a chemical (methyl group) to DNA, typically turning genes off. Demethylation, the removal of this chemical, turns genes on. Thus, environmental factors can impact the amount of protein a cell makes.
Histone modification is another key mechanism. DNA wraps around proteins called histones, and how tightly or loosely packed these histones are affects gene expression. Chemical groups can be added or removed from histones, influencing whether a gene is turned on or off.
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Non-coding RNAs also play a role. While coding RNA is used to make proteins, non-coding RNA can interfere with coding sequences, controlling gene expression.
The Power of Nutrition: Epi-Nutrients and Biological Age
Nutrition is one of the most powerful tools for influencing gene expression. What we eat, how we move, and how we manage stress send signals that either create or remove epigenetic molecules, hence rewriting our epigenetic “software” on a daily basis. Certain nutrients, known as "epi-nutrients," have the ability to switch on the "good" genes in our DNA.
Our chronological age is the number of years we’ve lived, however, our biological age refers to the age of our cells and tissues. Diet impacts the rate of cellular aging. Epi-Bioactives are compounds that regulate the activity of enzymes that write or erase epigenetic marks. Examples include polyphenols found in colorful fruits and vegetables, spices, coffee, green tea, olive oil, and butyrate from fermented foods. These nutrients promote healthy aging by reducing inflammation.
Environmental Epigenetics: A Broader Perspective
Environmental epigenetics describes how environmental factors affect cellular epigenetics and, hence, human health. Epigenetic marks alter the spatial conformation of chromatin to regulate gene expression. Environmental factors with epigenetic effects include behaviors, nutrition, and chemicals and industrial pollutants. Epigenetic mechanisms are also implicated during development in utero and at the cellular level, so environmental exposures may harm the fetus by impairing the epigenome of the developing organism to modify disease risk later in life. By contrast, bioactive food components may trigger protective epigenetic modifications throughout life, with early life nutrition being particularly important.
The Dutch Hunger Winter: A Stark Example
The Dutch Hunger Winter famine (1944-1945) provides a compelling example of how prenatal nutrition impacts epigenetics. People whose mothers were pregnant with them during the famine were more likely to develop certain diseases, such as heart disease, schizophrenia, and type 2 diabetes. Researchers found that these individuals had altered DNA methylation patterns compared to their siblings who were not exposed to famine before birth.
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Smoking and Epigenetics
Exposures such as smoking can also cause epigenetic changes. Smokers tend to have less DNA methylation at certain parts of the AHRR gene than nonsmokers, with the difference being more pronounced in heavy and long-term smokers. Quitting smoking can lead to increased DNA methylation at this gene, eventually reaching levels similar to those of nonsmokers.
Epigenetics and Disease: Cancer and Beyond
Certain diseases can change your epigenetics. Germs can change your epigenetics to weaken your immune system. For example, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes tuberculosis, can cause epigenetic changes in immune cells that turn off the IL-12B gene. Likewise, some epigenetic changes increase your cancer risk. Different types of cancer that seem similar can have different DNA methylation patterns. Epigenetics can be used to help determine which type of cancer a person has or can help to find hard-to-detect cancers earlier, although epigenetics alone cannot diagnose cancer.
Colorectal cancers, for example, have abnormal DNA methylation near certain genes, affecting their expression. Some commercial colorectal cancer screening tests use stool samples to look for this abnormal DNA methylation.
Epigenetics involves the study of how environmental factors, such as lifestyle, physical activity, exposure to toxins, and diet, are capable of modulating the expression of genes without altering our DNA sequence. Epigenetic modifications are common in many diseases, such as obesity , type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance , and cancer. Importantly, these epigenetic markers can be reversed by different therapeutic strategies such as occur after following a low-calorie diet, bariatric surgery, or physical activity during obesity management. Nutrients can also act as a source of epigenetic modifications and reverse specific epigenetic markers associated with disease.
The Southern European Atlantic Diet: A Model for Healthy Aging?
Recent scientific evidence has shown the importance of diet and lifestyle habits for the proper functioning of the human body. A balanced and healthy diet, physical activity, and psychological well-being have a direct beneficial effect on health and can have a crucial role in the development and prognosis of certain diseases.
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The Southern European Atlantic diet (SEAD), also named the Atlantic diet, is a unique dietary pattern that occurs in regions that present higher life expectancy, suggesting that this specific dietary pattern is associated with positive health effects. In fact, it is enriched with nutrients of high biological value, which, together with its cooking methods, physical activity promotion, reduction in carbon footprint, and promoting of family meals, promote these positive effects on health. The latest scientific advances in the field of nutri-epigenetics have revealed that epigenetic markers associated with food or nutrients and environmental factors modulate gene expression and, therefore, are involved with both health and disease.
Key Components of the SEAD
The SEAD, characteristic of northwestern parts of the Iberian Peninsula, emphasizes fresh, local, and seasonal foods. Key components include:
- High consumption of fish and shellfish: Provides high biological value proteins and omega-3 fatty acids, protecting cardiovascular health.
- Moderate consumption of meat: Mainly from autochthonous bovine and porcine breeds from extensive livestock farms.
- High production of Brassica vegetables: Includes broccoli, cabbage, collard greens, and grelos, often consumed cooked or in broth with pork.
- Apples, pears, grapes, and citrus fruits: Important fruits in this dietary pattern.
- Chestnuts: The most widely consumed nut, rich in PUFAs and tocopherols.
- Whole grains, legumes, and potatoes: Main sources of carbohydrates.
- Dairy products: Especially cheese, consumed daily and a source of high-value protein, calcium, and vitamins.
- Olive oil: The main source of fat, used for seasoning and grilling.
The SEAD also emphasizes sustainable and seasonal foods, low pollution in rural areas, home cooking, family meals, and daily physical activity.
Practical Tips for Epigenetic Health Through Diet
While you can’t change the genes you’re born with, you can impact how those genes are expressed with diet, lifestyle, and behavior modifications. The field of epigenetics studies how your environment and your behaviors (like the foods you choose to eat or how you manage your stress) impact how your genes work.
Making simple diet and lifestyle changes can help support optimal epigenetic health and increase the potential to positively influence gene expression to reduce chronic disease risk. Following a Mediterranean-type diet that emphasizes foods linked to positive epigenetic changes, such as cruciferous vegetables, berries, grapes, garlic, turmeric, and green tea, is a simple way to support optimal health and longevity.
- Limit excessive calorie intake and alcohol: Reduce inflammation and overall stress on the body.
- Include bioactive foods: Incorporate cruciferous vegetables, green tea, garlic, turmeric, and polyphenol-rich foods like red grapes and berries.
- Engage in regular exercise: Promotes positive epigenetic changes.
- Avoid alcohol and tobacco use: Limit exposure to environmental pollutants and reduce stress.
The Future of Epigenetics and Personalized Nutrition
As we better understand the connections between diet and the epigenome, the opportunity arises for clinical applications. Just as mapping our gene variations gives us a window into our personalized medical needs, so might a profile of one's unique epigenome.
While the concept of “eating for your epigenetics” sounds appealing, many studies on this topic are epidemiological in nature, with more research needed on the clinical applications of specific nutritional recommendations for individuals based on their genetic profiles. Functional medicine practitioners can evaluate DNA and epigenetic potential to help personalize nutritional and lifestyle recommendations at the individual level.
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