Clean up your Genes

It's easier than you think.

I am borrowing massively here from the title of a book written by Dr Ben Lynch back in 2018 - “Dirty Genes” - which sets out how when certain genes have “glitches” in them (or single nucleotide polymorphisms – known as “snips”) then we may need to take care with certain areas of our health. A great read, I thoroughly recommend.

I ran the DNA Health panel back in 2023 to find out a little bit more about my epigenetics – how our genes relate to our environment, lifestyle, diet etc. To be clear, running a panel like this does not excuse you from getting the basics right – good diet, getting outdoors, exercise, hydrating, sleeping well, sorting out whatever is bothering your soul…. But it might pinpoint which areas you need to get more right than others!

For example, it turns out that I have both the DQ2.2 & DQ2.5 “snips” on the HLA (human leukocyte antigen) gene – a gene that helps the immune system distinguish between the body's own cells and foreign invaders. These are the snips that predispose people towards Coeliac disease and yes, sure enough, I already knew this loud and clear because the day after eating gluten I feel lousy, headachy, a sort of weird fizzing sensation throughout my guts, foggy brained.

Other straightforward “snips” you may want to know about include BC01, which encodes beta-carotene dioxygenase, an enzyme crucial for converting beta-carotene (a precursor of vitamin A) into retinol, a form of vitamin A used by the body. An estimated 40 to 60% of the population has “snips” on this gene, which means that carrots, and all the other lovely orange-yellow vegetables and fruits may not convert down to cell-ready retinoids, and we may need to look to foods such as eggs, butter and cod liver oil to get our vitamin A.

Another common glitch is on genes called FADS 1 and 2. These are genes responsible for converting fatty acids down to the DHA and EPA, omega-3s that we need for their anti-inflammatory qualities. For people with glitches in these genes, the chia seeds and linseeds and walnuts may not cut it in terms of getting omega-3s from the ALA (alpha linolenic acid) down to DHA and EPA, the omega-3s found in fish oils. There are vegan alternatives to fish oils, by the way, vegans need not despair.

Then there’s the minefield of methylation. This simply refers to a process of tagging molecules in the body with a methyl group (a carbon and 3 hydrogens). But this process, which is happening right now in your cells as you read, is essential to many processes in the body, not least detoxification (or metabolisation) of many substances but also building new DNA and RNA, and for keeping your genes “stable”. But there are various steps to methylating well – you need the cycle that produces the methyl groups to work well, and you need the processes of tagging molecules also to work well.

I have a snip on my COMT gene – catechol-o-methyl-transferase – which as the name implies attaches methyl groups to catechols (bear with me with the techy language here). Catechols are hormones and neurotransmitters including dopamine, adrenaline and noradrenaline, but also (metabolites of) hormones such as oestrogen. We need to methylate to “deactivate” these hormones and neurotransmitters out of the body once they’ve done their jobs. If we have methylation “snips” we may not do this so well and these compounds hang around in their active form longer than they should, which can lead to a plethora of issues – oestrogen dominant symptoms such as PMS, and menstrual problems, but also potentially focus / behavioural issues such as ADHD and lack of mental attention (because the neurotransmitters are hanging around too long). BUT – and this is the point - there are steps you can take nutritionally to help yourself to methylate better, which is why you might test in the first place.

So there’s just a tiny snippet of the kinds of information you can get from an epigenetic test. If I have tickled your interest, please book in a discovery call here.

Here’s to clean genes!

Marie