change in diet could change your genes

[Amby 490]

WASHINGTON - Comprehensive lifestyle changes including a better diet and more exercise can lead not only to a better physique, but also to swift and dramatic changes at the genetic level, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

In a small study, the researchers tracked 30 men with low-risk prostate cancer who decided against conventional medical treatment such as surgery and radiation or hormone therapy.

The men underwent three months of major lifestyle changes, including eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and soy products, moderate exercise such as walking for half an hour a day, and an hour of daily stress management methods such as meditation.

As expected, they lost weight, lowered their blood pressure and saw other health improvements. But the researchers found more profound changes when they compared prostate biopsies taken before and after the lifestyle changes.

‘’After the three months, the men had changes in activity in about 500 genes — including 48 that were turned on and 453 genes that were turned off.

‘It's all in my genes, what can I do?’

The activity of disease-preventing genes increased while a number of disease-promoting genes, including those involved in prostate cancer and breast cancer, shut down, according to the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research was led by Dr. Dean Ornish, head of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, and a well-known author advocating lifestyle changes to improve health.

“It’s an exciting finding because so often people say, ’Oh, it’s all in my genes, what can I do?’ Well, it turns out you may be able to do a lot,” Ornish, who is also affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco, said in a telephone interview.

“’In just three months, I can change hundreds of my genes simply by changing what I eat and how I live?’ That’s pretty exciting,” Ornish said. “The implications of our study are not limited to men with prostate cancer.”

Ornish said the men avoided conventional medical treatment for prostate cancer for reasons separate from the study. But in making that decision, they allowed the researchers to look at biopsies in people with cancer before and after lifestyle changes.

“It gave us the opportunity to have an ethical reason for doing repeat biopsies in just a three-month period because they needed that anyway to look at their clinical changes (in their prostate cancer),” Ornish said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25199024/

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

A cucumber up your ####### would change things dramatically also!

[HAL 9000 96]

Ahh... I suppose that would be from personal experience.

Amber- nice find. Diet has been known to influence gene expression for quite some time... in good AND bad ways.

[Ban Hammer 13,429]

A cucumber up your ####### would change things dramatically also!

so will sitting in a nest of fire ants.

[almaty 19]

Ahh... I suppose that would be from personal experience.

Amber- nice find. Diet has been known to influence gene expression for quite some time... in good AND bad ways.

lol..that was good......

[Nessa 23]

interesting.

[almaty 19]

the article or the cucumber in the #######?

[Ban Hammer 13,429]

the article or the cucumber in the #######?

[Nessa 23]

both

this has me thinking. If being gay is in the genes, what happens if you change your diet to a gay diet like Pedroh and his chai latte? Will you become gay?

[Jenn! 918]

Diet has been known to influence gene expression for quite some time... in good AND bad ways.

So the genes themselves aren't changing, only their expression? Changing genes takes a lot more than a change in diet, no? Changing your diet couldn't prevent certain genes from being passed on to offspring.

[HAL 9000 96]

Diet has been known to influence gene expression for quite some time... in good AND bad ways.

So the genes themselves aren't changing, only their expression? Changing genes takes a lot more than a change in diet, no? Changing your diet couldn't prevent certain genes from being passed on to offspring.

Exactly Jenn. If the genes changed they'd literally be mutations... and most foods that I know of don't do that very well (but it IS technically possible).

All that is being modified is the expression profile of certain genes. For example- too many free-form saturated fatty acids in the circulation will drive up expression ('turn on' above baseline levels) of fat-based hormones that in turn drive lipogenesis in the liver and muscle (bad) as well as genes that eventually lead to cellular death (apoptosis) in some tissues.

On the flipside you have good genes that get upregulated (same thing- turned on/ expressed at greater amounts over baseline) when you feed yourself good food like Omega-3 fatty acids, that downregulate the aforementioned example as well as upregulation of 'housekeeping' genes that keep the cell shipshape.

I may add that mothers develop ovocytes before fertilization, so maternal effect mRNA that helps a zygote become an embryo usually is there before the grand fertilization event... however, a mom's diet will affect an embryo's developmental patterns (even through breastfeeding), so what mom eats many times does influence the pattern of gene expression as an embryo turns into a baby and beyond.

Edited June 17, 2008 by maviwaro

[panamania79 2]

A cucumber up your ####### would change things dramatically also!

[Jenn! 918]

Thanks for the explanation!

I always used to fall asleep in cell bio lecture.