Genes and gene expression provide the key that unlocks health, longevity, and fitness in all humans.

Even though we cannot control the diet of our parents and the factors leading up to conception, birth, and formal years, if you are reading this blog then you have the potential to upgrade genetic expression today.

“It seems clear that the composition and quantity of our diets can be key in influencing the symptoms of chronic disease. It is important to distinguish between diet quality and quantity, both clearly have very specific effects.”

“The key to controlling our personal genetic susceptibility to disease. In choosing what we eat, we choose whether we will provide our genes the weapons that cause disease.”

Berit Johansen, professor of biology at NTNU

Or the ammunition to fight disease and the resources to expand consciousness, perhaps.

There are genes that regulate normal biological processes and then there are genes that regulate optimal or evolving biological processes.

Survival does not always indicate fitness, necessarily. People can consume any type of calorie and water and then survive for an amount of time, I’m sure. We should be cautious to assume that even though a person is deemed, “healthy weight,” that they are truly feeling that way.

When it comes to pain management, yes I believe that there is a reason behind everything and if you focus on the underlying issues, well-being can improve moving forward. Any issue can be considered an opportunity for connecting with nutrition and experiencing how food can have realized healing potential.

The potential to heal is most certainly related to mental processes and likely the information is already in most cells. The key of nutrition is that it unlocks or enables transcription of anti-inflammatory genetic expression in cells. From DNA to RNA, the antioxidants involved in the creation of proteins may have systemic benefit throughout the biome thereby allowing unhealthy cells to be naturally recycled through the process of apoptosis or controlled self-destruction.

“Apoptosis occurs in normal cells to maintain a balance between cell proliferation and cell death. A deregulation of this balance due to modifications in the apoptosic pathway leads to different human diseases including cancers.”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24709797/

Metrics for fitness should be individualized for each person, going far beyond basic indices of height and weight.

How fast is a person aging?

That is an uncomfortable question to ask and not something to really speak of loudly. Most people are aware that things like meth abuse can quickly age a person, but what about eating habits? I don’t think anybody wants to age faster than they need to and most people realize that there is a balance to be made between short term satisfaction and long term investment.

“Dietary constituents with especially high anti-inflammatory and antioxidant capacity include vitamin C, vitamin E, and phytochemicals such as carotenoids and polyphenols. Several of these can interact with transcription factors such as NF-kB and Nrf-2, related to anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, respectively. Vitamin D in particular may perturb viral cellular infection via interacting with cell entry receptors (angiotensin converting enzyme 2), ACE2. Dietary fiber, fermented by the gut microbiota into short-chain fatty acids, has also been shown to produce anti-inflammatory effects.”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32471251/

There are quite a many things in our lives that can apply the pressure to age quicker. Hopefully, most of that can be mitigated through sleep hygiene and a sustainable pattern of balanced and properly prepared nutrition. Due to the gravity of the situation, time is a true asset and aging is inevitable despite functional efforts in the promotion of wellness.

It’s a gift to be alive.

Saying that it is a gift to be alive makes me feel better about the difficulty of living. By saying that that, I wish to truly be alive and free of vices. Onward.

Stimulation of genes that activate healing and cleansing processes will also help you burn fat.

I think it would be fair to equate healing processes to that which improves balance within the organism. Naturally, each organism must maintain some element of homeostasis within an ever changing environment. There may be a slow moving marker which represents the, “genetic set point,” with regard to health status.

Many people wish to change their appearance or phenotype because it can be more uncomfortable to be a person who looks a way that they feel dissatisfied with. I can’t argue that it is a motivator for a great many people to improve the way they feel about their body and I am included in this as well. Exercise and physical activity is absolutely a gift to the human spirit and we should also acknowledge the importance of knowing nutrition as containing wisdom of the ancients.

That’s why I so often speak of medicinal mushrooms because of their amazing powers of bringing balance to immune processes. Fungi are a truly underrated element of nutrition that can unlock incredible ability for cellular recovery, dose dependent I’ve mega-dosed with no negative side effects. For people who cook, the mushrooms are quite resilient and can be prepared with many different heating methods and duration.

Nutrition is a Function of the Environment, Which Directly Relates to Genetic Expression of the Organism.

Food variety and potency plays an important role in the evolution of any animal, but especially humans because our ancestors have learned how to harness fire for a million years. Cooking over fire is truly an ancient method and also smoking and curing. The nature of fire is that it is transformative and with just the right exposure, it can improve the assimilation of elements by human digestive systems.

Cooking of various vegetables typically unlocks many nutrients, even though the way that nutrients change from heating does matter. Even after ingesting cooked food, many of the beneficial nutrients that are lost in the cooking process may actually be re-activated by the metabolic might of the microbiome. There are certainly benefits to the regular consumption of raw food as well.

“Functional prediction revealed that broccoli consumption increased the pathways involved in the functions of the endocrine system (P=.05), transport and catabolism (P=.04), and energy metabolism (P=.01). These results reveal that broccoli consumption affects the composition and function of the human gastrointestinal microbiota.”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30317146/

The microbiome can become unbalanced commonly in people who are eating over-stimulating, hyper-palatable food products regularly which in effect promotes unhealthy bacterial balance that signals the gut-brain-axis to crave more ultra-processed caloric products which only leads to dysbiosis eventually.

Basically, the more hyper-palatable food products that you eat, the more regularly that you’ll want to keep consuming it. That wouldn’t be a problem, except that an overgrowth of redundant bacteria can cause major issues throughout the entire body. The longer you’ve eaten a diet consisting of ultra-processed calories, the harder it will be to, “fix your metabolism,” so to speak.

Promoting Gut Balance Should be the Priority of a Fitness Based Nutrition Plan and Sustainable Diet Model.

If a person has a very specific issue, they can work with a professional individually. That being said, a major problem facing people today is not actually weight, but rather gut imbalance and chronic inflammation. A person of any weight can have stressed organs and be unable to process nutrients or toxins optimally.

Longevity and recovery are key elements of a fitness lifestyle. There are many people who truly enjoy lifting heavy and doing hard, challenging, amazing workouts. Let’s be real, exercise is actually the fun part for many people, while nutrition involves the negotiating of life-long compromises.

There is certainly some give and take when it comes to nutrition. We should be able to enjoy the meals at restaurants without having to worry about our health — that would be the ideal situation. I am no stranger to indulging and sometimes over-indulging which I admit has been frustrating, but also highly enjoyable. There is no perfection, but at least we can forgive our prior eating and make an intentional effort towards balance, today.

You have some power to alter the genetic expression of your cells in a systemic fashion.

All environmental input that the organism experiences, including food, can and should be expected to impact genetic expression and real-time metabolic activity. It should come as no surprise that extremely high quality of input can promote genetic markers in the direction towards balance, optimal homeostasis, and heightened fitness given the opportunity for recovery.

Therefore, consuming a nourishing diet abundant in omega-3 fatty acids and variety of antioxidants that are mostly fresh and properly prepared should help a human achieve genetic processes which are progressively valuable to the organism.

We are being asked to make unconscious processes become conscious and intentional even though humans would rather not think so hard about what they put in their mouths. The payoff is that people who really do make the effort have life altering experiences and more accessible pathways.

Instead of just surviving, you are now thriving.