How I Hacked My Genetic Code

I know what you’re thinking. As if…

It’s not possible to hack your genetic code. You are stuck with the genes your Mom and Dad gave you, right?

You are doomed to live a life that’s basically a “mash-up” of the delightful traits you inherited, some wonderful, some downright deadly, others that are more of an annoyance than anything else. Think shortness, baldness, chubbiness, flatulence. The list goes on…

So, suck it up and live out your life. Age gracefully. Be good to your neighbors because that way, you’ll at least enjoy your short, painful life, and your friends and family will raise a glass to your legacy.

This is the kind of nonsense we are trained to accept, based on parental guidance, friends’ opinions, and even doctors’ advice and prescriptions.

[Full disclosure from here on. I’m not a doctor, or even a trained biohacker. I’m just a citizen looking for answers. The rest is all my opinion based on a lot of research and a truly scary amount of self-testing and analysis. Don’t take my advice. Do your own research and make informed decisions!]

Bottom line, DNA is overrated as a cause and effect. You can’t live without it, obviously, but that’s not the point. Your DNA predisposes you to certain traits handed down from your parents, but that’s not the end of the story. The key is how the genes in your DNA are “expressed”. That’s biology speak for “how your genes behave” under the influences that surround them. Think about your lifestyle, diet, exercise, stress, personal relationships, environmental issues (like toxins, pollution, etc.), again, the list goes on…

This is the science of epigenetics, and it’s much more than a bio-buzzword. It’s really the key to our survival and happiness. No matter what your parents handed you on a silver platter of protein sequences, how you end up depends on how you play the game. The good news is, you can do something about your epigenetics. Here’s how and why I discovered my code and how I developed a strategy to live longer and better.

My story starts kind of late in life. I stumbled through my twenties, thirties and forties doing pretty well in business and my personal life (i.e., no major disasters in either, and my health seemed pretty good too), but when I hit my fifties, the wheels started to wobble. I started getting weird rashes on my head, neck, arms and legs periodically. I went to see various dermatologists, because I was worried about skin cancer. They all told me it was some medical-speak thing like “seborrheic dermatitis”, and not to worry about it. Then it got worse, and more frequent. It covered more of my body and became a real source of embarrassment. That’s enough to get most of us motivated!

So I searched online and went to see more dermatologists. Finally, I found one who took one look at me and said “psoriasis”. He said it’s inherited and incurable, but we can treat it to reduce or even eliminate the sores and inflammation. I’ve documented my journey with psoriasis (and psoriatic arthritis) here. After two years of drugs (with some nasty side effects, think mild stomach flu on a daily basis), major diet changes, and a big effort to reduce stress, I was finally able to corral my psoriasis and even send it into remission.

Good news, right? End of story? Hardly.

Instead of thinking, “why me?” or “why now?”, I started asking “why?” I started thinking about my life, and it dawned on me that I had been having episodes of psoriasis since I was a teenager, I had just forgotten about them. My Dad was an MD, and he got me anti-inflammatory creams, and my Mom and I discussed how elevated stress was lurking behind each episode. Then, I realized that my Dad had exactly the same symptoms periodically, and so did both of my sisters. Wow! The specter of genetics started raising its ugly head.

Then I spent weeks researching autoimmune diseases, like psoriasis, and discovered a lot of surveys and tests pointing to a variety of epigenetic factors that could be messing with my immune system and causing my flare-ups. We already know about one of these from experience, stress, but there were others waiting in the weeds. Diet was the next obstacle. After reading much of the literature on autoimmune preventative (elimination) diets, I took the plunge.

First, I stopped taking all the drugs. Yay, no more daily stomach flu! I stopped eating sugar, fruit (fructose), gluten, grains, dairy, legumes (beans), nightshades (tomatoes and peppers), and alcohol. I know, what’s left? I eliminated as many toxins from my home as possible (most cleaning solutions, soaps, deodorant, pesticides, i.e., things with known toxic chemicals). I exercised and got at least eight hours of sleep daily. The diet and lifestyle was difficult at times, especially trying to eat out on a very restricted diet, but I got used to it. I had become my own lab rat, but for a good cause for which I was truly dedicated.

The good news, I pushed both psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis into remission, and I had done it naturally. With 20/20 hindsight, I had altered (or turned off) the expression of genes that were responsible for the excessive immune response that caused my psoriasis and arthritis. Despite inheriting and living with a “no-known-cure” disease, I had suppressed it with epigenetics by making tough but necessary changes to my diet, lifestyle and environment.

And now for the rest of the story…

I loved listening to Paul Harvey back in the day. Best storyteller in modern history, in my opinion. So here we go.

My next “why” question had more to do with “what’s next?” Which genes were responsible for my psoriasis? If my tendency to get psoriasis with various epigenetic factors could be controlled by eliminating gene-specific stresses, what else could be done? What other conditions might I be prone to that I could address in a similar way?

One approach would be to look at all the genetic frailties you know about, for example Uncle Bob, who had five heart attacks, or Aunt Jean who suffered from cancer late in life. You could research and attack each potential malady with well-researched epigenetic programs to prevent them all. Trouble is, there might be a lot of these to deal with and probably quite a few you don’t even know about. Alzheimer’s is a good example. A generation ago, we didn’t know what Alzheimer’s was, and most people wrote off the ever-popular dementia as simply “old age”. Nothing you could do about it but make your loved ones safe and comfortable. Some diseases skip generations or find their way out of the gene pool due to genetic diversity. So, the shotgun approach to epigenetics is likely to fail, if only from your being overwhelmed by strict diet and lifestyle or sheer boredom! Don’t get me wrong, a healthy diet and lifestyle is good for everyone, but not necessarily a preventative for the most important specific ailments ominously waiting in your closet.

What you want to know is, what are my top X risk factors, and how can I avoid them? Or maybe you already have a couple of them, and those move to the top of your list. Armed with a prioritized list, you can manage your risk factors and/or current health issues in a focused, organized way. But how?

By now, everyone has heard about genetic testing. You can’t miss the 23andme ads, after all, but most of those promote learning about your ancestors and where they came from. As it turns out, for under $100, you can order home DNA tests and wellness reports from 23andme and other services that go further. Available health tests give you details of hundreds of specific genes that are known to influence certain diseases and inherited human traits like baldness, obesity and coffee consumption. You also get a report that offers general advice on what to do if you have certain of these“conditions”. Those I found more “interesting” than “helpful”. So I got my genetic data and I dug deeper.

To take it to the next level, you want to take your genetic testing results and upload them to a diagnostic program that analyzes your code and flags anomalies in your DNA sequencing. That means differences in your DNA building blocks, called single nucleotide polymorphisms (or SNPs), compared to the majority of people tested. Think of them as DNA copying errors that occurred when your cells replicate, which they do constantly. Sounds ominous, but everybody has SNPs, and most are benign, with no observable differences between people who have them and the rest of the human population. The aforementioned programs also identify SNPs that are commonly associated with potential health problems. Not only have millions of SNPs been identified, but they have also been studied for the various impacts they have on your biological systems and what you can potentially do to minimize the damage that some may cause. This is what the hunt is all about.

Speaking of which, my next step was to upload my 23andme results to a program called Strategene, from which I received a detailed report of my SNPs. From there, what you could (and probably should) do is to consult with a healthcare professional (ideally, a functional medicine specialist) that has been trained in interpreting these reports. If you’re into learning about this yourself (like me), you can dive in, learn about each SNP and Google what to do if you have some of the more nefarious SNPs. We’ll get to those in a minute.

One important lesson I learned is that it’s wise not to treat this mystery as a point-by-point fix-it solution, but instead to take a holistic approach to learning how your genes fit together in complex biological processes and to develop a comprehensive wellness program to optimize those processes. A great place to start is “Dirty Genes” by Dr. Ben Lynch, who I consider to be the top expert in this new but rapidly growing field. He also has lots of videos explaining the concepts involved, and he makes it personal from his own experience.

So, finally, here’s what I’m genetically “hacking” these days, and how it’s helping me.

MTHFR

No, it’s not an abbreviation for an all-too-common expletive, it’s an enzyme that acts as a catalyst for converting vitamin B9 into a usable form, methyl folate, which in turn is a critical component of the methylation process that drives many important functions like repairing damaged cells, processing toxins out of your system and regulating neurotransmitters that control your mood, sleep and brain health. No big deal, right?

So, what happens when there’s a MTHFR SNP that degrades the enzyme’s ability to do its job? All kinds of problems. For starters, autoimmune disease, liver disease, and thyroid dysfunction. For example, degraded MTHFR can lead to heavy metals toxicity, like mercury from tuna, since your liver can’t process and eliminate it efficiently. Poor performing MTHFR can also lead to a buildup in homocysteine, which increases your risk for heart disease.

You guessed it, my Strategene report identified not one, but two MTHFR mutations, one labeled C677T and the other A1298C, if you’re scoring at home. What this means is that my combination of SNPs results in about a 50% reduction in MTHFR activity. Knowing that I had psoriasis, further blood tests confirmed that I also had relative high homocysteine, abnormal thyroid levels and some lipid profile issues. Time to pay attention to MTHFR! Oh, by the way, about 50% of the U.S. population has this SNP, so you might want to check this out.

Now, at least I have a pretty good idea why I contracted psoriasis, through genetics and epigenetics, and I discovered high homocysteine along with some other worrisome disease markers in follow-up blood tests. In short, MTHFR is a great place to start on your detective hunt for real and potential health issues. I also have a plan for supporting it through modifying epigenetic factors.

Important in this approach is healing your gut first, since that’s where much of the biochemical action in your body happens. Amy Myers, MD, has some great information and resources on how to heal your gut, so I would start there. What works for me is research, followed by trying each food or supplement one at a time, seeing how you feel, and upping the dosage slowly and as needed until you reach the recommended amounts for your particular genetic profile and health issues. Then continue monitoring how you feel and get blood tests on a regular basis.

Armed with the knowledge that you have genetic susceptibilities, the first step is NOT TO PANIC. Start by building a plan that you can stick to. Do your research, and by all means talk to a professional. If nothing else, read Dirty Genes, and that will give you much of the info you need. For me, the elimination diet (low carb, mostly organic vegetables and some meat) plus supplements, diet, exercise and solid sleep every night got me feeling much better — less fatigue, more mental clarity, fewer illnesses and better overall outlook. I won’t recommend specific foods, supplements, and dosages, because each person has different sensitivities and reactions to these. You need to find your own way on this, but it’s definitely worth it.

What else am I working on?

More of my genes have been “dirtied” by my lifestyle, diet, environment and personal/professional choices:

COMT

This gene determines your ability to regulate neurotransmitters, the chemicals in your brain that process both thought and emotion. I have a variation of COMT (fast COMT) that predisposes me to natural calmness in the face of adversity, sleeping well, and an inquisitive nature. On the down side, I have trouble getting excited about anything, relatively weak memory, and a tendency towards depression. The good news is, with a carefully planned program, you can have the good side and mitigate the bad side. I know, this sounds like human engineering. That’s a choice you’ll have to make if you want to feel better about certain perceived “challenges” in your life.

GSTP1

GSTP1 is a killer gene, specifically, it suppresses the creation and growth of cancer tumors in addition to participating in a wide variety of detoxification processes. In concert with epigenetic factors, degradation of GSTP1 has been associated with increased cancer risk. Both of my parents had cancer, and probably some of their relatives, so I am wide awake to that possibility. Recently, I had a high PSA result in a blood test, which I have documented previously, so I’m acutely interested in prostate cancer prevention. My biohacking for this SNP involves diet, exercise, supplements, and toxin elimination in a complimentary program to my MTHFR and COMT efforts. So far, I have reduced my PSA to normal levels over several blood tests, and all other tests for prostate cancer have been negative. Phew!

APOE

This gene makes a protein that helps carry cholesterol and other types of fat in the bloodstream. The APOE4 variant (allele) is the major known risk-factor gene for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. I’m lucky, since I don’t have this gene variant, although I am working on another program to prevent Alzheimer’s more holistically. I’ll describe this program in an upcoming post.

Bottom Line

If you’ve hung in with me this far, you must be “into” this genetic stuff due to curiosity or maybe you’re worried about what lies ahead. I appreciate your interest and hope you find what you’re seeking. I’m telling this story, because nearly everyone I meet is more-or-less in the dark about the fundamentals of their own health and how they can take action to improve things. We rely on a medical community that has been largely trained to diagnose illnesses and prescribe drugs or procedures to fix them. Rarely do you find a physician that wants to understand “why” you are sick and look to prevent future occurrences or worsening of conditions. This is a sensitive subject, however, and not everyone will want to embark on a journey like mine. There are other people who have a stake in your health, and not all of them will support you if you want to engage in “biohacking” like I have. For one thing, it can be expensive. Have you looked at the price of supplements lately? My wife has been very supportive, if not a bit skeptical, but the results so far have been impressive for both of us, so we’re all in. This decision is not about saving money on insurance or hospital bills. It’s about taking control of your health. There is no guarantee that you can prevent disease or death — after all, age is still a big mystery to all kinds of scientists and healthcare providers. You can be sure, however, that I’m tracking progress in that field and will try new things if and when they become available and make sense.

How I Hacked My Genetic Code

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