What would you do if you could go into every cell of your body and alter your DNA? Think of 3
things that you would change right now if you could.

Since I became a physician over 26 years ago, I’ve seen people plagued with inherited
conditions. I’ve had patients who were prone to obesity because everyone in their family just
“had weight issues.” Others have developed autoimmune conditions such as rheumatoid
arthritis or thyroid dysfunction because their parents had these. We see asthma, eczema,
cancer, heart disease, and high blood pressure cluster in certain families.

Some people feel like they have a time bomb just ticking in their genes

For me, I’ve struggled with my weight most of my adult life. My life would have been drastically
different if I did not have the genes for insulin resistance and obesity.

What if you could change your DNA? Our DNA is determined by our chromosomes, all 23 pairs. Each chromosome contains our genes, the genetic cocktail that makes you the unique person you are. Each area of a
chromosome Is encoded with information that determines which proteins are made and how.
We call that process transcription. It is in that set of instructions that I was born with blue eyes,
set to be about 5’7” and losing my hair in my early 40s.

Here’s an important foundational concept that I want to teach you: only genes that are turned
on and expressed (transcribed, or following the printed instructions like a recipe) actually
matter. When they are turned “off” it’s like they don’t even exist.

While we are born with just one genetic roadmap for our bodies to follow, how those genes are
expressed is NOT set in stone. You cannot actually change your DNA, but you CAN change how
your genetics show up in your life.

Imagine having an entire grocery store of ingredients at your disposal. If you did not like the
taste of the cake you made (the current way your genetic code is showing up in your life) you
could change up the ingredients (turn on an off different genes) to produce a brand new,
flavorful, moist, gluten-free, health, zero-calorie, organic cake!

Let’s discuss epigenetics.

Epigenetics is the study of how our bodies change as a result of modifying our genetic
expression rather than changing our genes themselves. Think of it as lifestyle genetics.
If you’re like me, when you really grasp this concept, it will drastically change your life for the
better.

Whether my genes are turned on (expressed) or not is determined by the environment bathing
those genes. In other words, the climate of my kitchen determines how good the cake tastes.
My environment is whatever I allow into my body (food choices, toxins), my body movement,
my spiritual wellness, and the health of my relationships. It’s all the factors my body
encounters, many of which are under my control, regardless of whether I realize that or not. In
fact, it’s difficult for me to think of anything my body encounters that doesn’t impact how my
DNA is expressed.

This puts you in the driver’s seat. If you want to have less inflammation in your body, even if you have genes that tend toward causing more inflammation (chronic pain, insulin resistance, skin conditions such as psoriasis),
then you will want to consume foods that turn on anti-inflammatory genes to release chemicals
that decrease inflammation.

When you struggle with extra weight, you can modify the genes that ramp up insulin resistance
by consuming less sugar as well as by making sure that you have a daily mindfulness habit to
manage the stress you face. Avoid pesticides and herbicides by eating fresh organic fruits and
vegetables to further turn off insulin resistance.

If you deal with migraines, chronic pain, or depression, change your environment so that your
body efficiently makes ATP, the energy molecules that sustain life. Exercising, fasting, cold
exposure, and avoiding carbohydrates turns on a transcription factor called PGC-1-alpha that
causes your mitochondria to become larger and more efficient. You can also make sure that
your body is getting all the micronutrients, including iron, magnesium, manganese, calcium,
vitamin D, ferritin, and selenium, to produce a robust amount of energy.

Making it real. Once you learn that every way in which your body encounters the environment (food, toxins,
radiation, body movement, sleep, interactions with other people, and developing spiritual
habits) directly impacts how your genes show up in your life, you realize that you get to decide
where your health is going.

That is an empowering revelation. No longer are you predetermined to have the life you
thought was inevitable based on your family history or even based on the health you have so
far.. Change your lifestyle and you change your health destiny.

Next steps. If you want a physician-lead medical practice that approaches your health from an integrative
perspective, one that doesn’t shy away from telling you the steps that you can take to find wellness where there wasn’t any, please visit our website at: https://www.alphaomegawellness.com.

Video Transcript:

Hey, have you ever just thought that maybe you got the short end of the stick when it came to your dna? Like you don’t like how things are programmed in you, you don’t like your weight, or maybe you have an autoimmune condition and you just feel like that you lost the DNA lottery? Well, I’m gonna explain to you today why maybe that’s not true, and there’s things that you can do that actually change how your genes are expressed. So stay tuned.

Hey guys, Dr. Dee here, and I’m ready to debunk some healthcare myths that maybe even your doctor still believes. So I’ve always believed for a long time, like most of my life, that your genetics were your genetics. And we’ve all known the lifelong discussion about nature versus nurture. And you know, throughout time people have been in one camp or the other that like, no, it’s, it’s not really how you’re made, it’s more like what nurturing environment has done. There were studies on babies and whether they got held or not and how that impacted them. And then the other camp is like, no, it’s actually really just your genetics. And so for a long time, I think that we’ve really come to believe myself included, that my genetic makeup is my genetic makeup. So like, if I struggle with weight like I have, well that’s just because that’s in my genes.

And so we’ve known that things like, um, diet and exercise. And let’s face it, we’ve all thought willpower, right? Willpower allows you to kind of overcome some of that. But you know, there’s a reason why you end up kind of right back in the same place. And so we can blame our genetics for that. I’m here to debunk that myth. So in order to understand why maybe that’s not true, we need to talk about this idea of epigenetics. So what’s epigenetics actually mean? Well, to understand that we gotta go back to middle school science. I think it’s in middle school when we learn this, but we’re gonna go back to, to, uh, middle school, high school science when we actually learn about chromosomes and dna. And I just wanna do a little refresher course for you because it’s important to understand why your genetic makeup does not determine your health.

So when we talk about chromosomes, so we all have 23 pairs of chromosomes, or 46 chromosomes, 23 pairs, and we have duplicates. We have two number ones and two number twos all the way up to 22. Because sometimes there’s little errors in those chromosomes. So maybe I’ve got a bad spot on chromosome three, but my other chromosome three is fine, so I can still survive as a human being. So 23 pairs of chromosomes, 22 chromosomes plus an xx if you’re female or XY if you’re male. But what’s that actually mean? What’s that mean in the real world? I mean, we learned it at one point, but like how does that matter to us today? How does that matter to our discussion today? This myth that I’m debunking? Well, the chromosomes are our dna. You might remember Watson Creek figured out like the double helix. And so essentially our DNA determines how proteins are made in our body, how they’re transcribed.

That’s the term that we scientists and physicians use to talk about DNA and how the results of that DNA become, you know, my blue eyes, my blonde hair when I was growing up, or my lack of hair. Now all that’s in our genetics, right? Well, this DNA actually, uh, turns on an off production of different proteins in our body, and that’s what we consider to be our genetic makeup. And so for the longest time, I always just thought, well, if I’m gonna have an autoimmune condition like psoriasis, which I have, if I’m gonna have issues controlling my weight, which I’ve had all that’s because of just this genetic programming in me, and I might be able to white knuckle through some things to make that better. I can certainly use topical steroids on my skin. I wanna throw most of that out the window. Yes, some of it is true, but we have to discuss this idea of epigenetics because epigenetics means you are in control, not your lineage.

So what do we actually mean when we say epigenetics? Well, here’s the thing, yes, our DNA is important, but how that DNA impacts us is significantly determined by our environment. Now what’s that mean? Does that mean that because I live in Indianapolis, I have a certain genetic code, uh, not really more like the environment that I’m around all the time, like not just my locale, but let’s say toxins that I’m exposed to. Let’s say that I’m in a place where there’s a lot of pesticides used on the fields near my home, and eventually not hard to believe that those pesticides will make their way into my body via, let’s see, my mucosal surfaces like in my mouth or like my eyes or a mucosal surface through my skin and definitely through my food. So these chemicals make their way into our body, and then they actually play a significant role in how our proteins are transcribed from our dna.

So things are turned on and off by our environment, by our lifestyle. So what’s this mean for you? It puts you back in the driver’s seat. Yeah, I might not be able to move my ca my family, you know, you know, some, you know, 5,000 miles across the world to get to a different environment, but I have significant amount of control over what I expose myself to. So whereas I used to believe as a traditionally trained allopathic physician that, okay, well you know, what you eat doesn’t really matter unless you’re consuming excess calories. And like inorganic really isn’t that important, right? That’s for just the woo woo people, the tree huggers. But no, it’s hugely important because I’m putting these chemicals into my body and they are determining not only which protein, which proteins get transcribed, they’re also determining my health and wellness as a result of that.

So what’s that mean for you? It means that as you start modifying these different aspects of your lifestyle, you essentially change your genetics. You’re not really changing your genetics, but you’re changing the expression of those. And so when I personally started paying attention to what I was consuming in food and started, um, consuming foods that are non-inflammatory, started consuming foods that bless my body, started paying attention to hunger cues and eating when I’m hungry, when I started eliminating carbohydrates from my diet and focusing on good fat and protein at each meal, you know what happened? My genetic expression changed and my weight started coming off. I’m still on my own weight loss journey, but my weight’s the lowest it’s been in eight years. I’m down 54 pounds from my peak. And it’s because I’m doing exactly what I’m gonna teach you to do in this series of videos.

So pay attention to this because what you do every day actually matters. And let me tell you something, the body keeps score. So years and years and years of abusing our body, of consuming things that are inflammatory of eating processed foods, of not going organic, it does over time have an impact. But that means that if you change now going forward, that also has an impact. So I’m 51 years old, I’m doing things right now that determine my health when I’m in my seventies and eighties. Let that sink in for a minute. You know, I think so many times we just think, well, you know what? Like when I get sick, I’ll just deal with it. Or you’ll hear people say, well, you gotta die of something. So here’s the thing, I’m not worried about dying, but until the day that I do die, I want to be at maximum health and maximum wellness because I want to be flourishing.

I wanna be thriving so that I can play with my kids and my grandkids and maybe my great grandkids if I play my cards right. So yes, genetics does play a role. I don’t want to come on here and and give you heresy saying that it doesn’t, but it’s not the role that we thought. In fact, they’ve done twin studies and they found out that 30% of the genetic expression in twins was seemingly just genetic, but the other 70% was based on their environment. Now tell me that that’s not important. Tell me that’s not life changing. Tell me that that does not put you in the driver’s seat to control where your health and wellness goes today. Starting today, you have the opportunity to change the entire trajectory of your life. And so I just wanna make sure that you guys understand this concept because for me, doing my functional medicine training, this is new, this is mind blowing, and I felt like it was important to come on here and share this with you.

So when I come on and I teach you about thyroid health or I teach you about weight loss, or we talk about depression, or we talking about lack of energy, I want you to understand that the things that I teach you to do to implement truly change how your body’s genetic expression occurs. And so when we talk about things like fasting or caloric restriction, or we talk about reducing your carbohydrate load, we talk about exercise, we talk about cold exposure, all of these things increase your energy production. And as a result, they can not only help with the energy that you have, they can also help with depression and anxiety because those things occur in the brain. They can help decrease inflammation in your body. They can cause you to, uh, cause your body to sense pain differently. So literally changing your environment changes how your body processes chronic pain.

So if you’re dealing with chronic pain, you’re dealing with thyroid issues, you’re dealing with skin issues, you’re dealing with, um, weight issues, you’re gonna wanna pay attention to the videos that I’m putting out because I want to teach you how to get control over that so that you’re in the driver’s seat, not your parents, not your grandparents, not your great-grandparents, maybe not even your medical provider, because a lot of doctors don’t know this. They’ve not dived deep and studied this. And so, you know, they might just still think, well, that’s just your lot in life. You just lost the genetic lottery. And I’m here to tell you that it’s not that simple and it’s not true. So by you paying attention to what comes into your body, what you’re exposed to, what chemicals you’re putting on your skin, by paying attention to that, by limiting your toxic burden, by learning how to deal with stress and anxiety, by developing a daily, um, spiritual mindfulness discipline, you impact your cortisol level, you impact how your adrenal glands are responding to your environment.

And so if your cortisol is off the chains all the time, and I work with you and I help you manage that so that that comes down to a a better level, we decreased inflammation in your body, we decreased insulin resistance, we help you lose weight by helping you manage the stress of life. So listen, I hope this blesses you guys. I wanna just tell you that, uh, if you don’t have a daily spiritual practice, my personal one is I get up and read the Bible every day, do devotional and pray. Uh, that has been life changing to me. I look back on times in my life when I was extremely unhealthy and I was just burning the candle at both ends and I was emotionally a mess and mentally a mess, physically a mess. And I just wanna tell you that if you’ve not found a relationship with Jesus, I just wanna encourage you to do that.

You can reach out to me, touch base, reach me on Instagram, reach me on Facebook, whatever, come by the office because I’m gonna tell you that like to me he’s the great healer and that’s the start of wellness. There’s certainly other things that we have to do. I’m not just gonna be one of these guys that tells you to just pray harder for your health. I’m gonna give you tactical steps that you can take that will allow you to implement life changes that get you healthier physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. So I love you guys. Thanks for tuning in. Click subscribe so that I can keep bringing you good content. And please share this with your friends if you think that it will help them. God bless you guys.