Thrive State Podcast

EPISODE 26: Epigenetics – How to Control Your Genetic Destiny

Episode 26: Dr. Steven Cole

We once believed that our DNA is like our health and longevity prewritten and predestined from the moment we were conceived by our parents.

That’s a myth!

Genetics are not like rocks. Genes are not like curses. There’s so much about what we do and what circumstances we live in that influence and shape what we become out of gene makeup.

Epigeneticist, genomics researcher and professor of medicine at UCLA, Dr. Steven Cole is here to break those myths for us. Pioneering human social genomics, Dr. Cole sheds some light and explains how we have more control over our health than we think.

The DNA is like a menu of options, but the recipe we’re choosing—which genes are turned on—out of that menu is really up to us.

Watch the full video and check out Dr. Kien Vuu’s amazing resource on how you can actually choose that “right recipe” for your health. Get the thrivestatebook.com to learn more!

Show notes

01:04

Breaking the Myth: Genetics are not like rocks and the DNA laid down at birth does not necessarily affect you every single day of your life. Whatever genes you got when you were born are neither necessarily what you’re keeping until the day you die nor are the genes that determine the day you’ll die.

02:03

We change a lot more than we’re aware of. Every day, billions of our cells die and are reproduced. We are constantly rebuilt leaving us vulnerable to the influences of the environment around us.

02:46

Epigenetics is all about activating and deactivating genes that we already have encoded in our DNA in the process of constant self-regeneration. The world we live in and the life we live play roles in that process.

04:31

Diseases don’t lie by and large in the DNA that we inherited but mostly on which of those genes are turned on and off in a person’s life.

05:21

Our food, exercise, degree of stress, chemicals in our environment – everything – influences which genes are turned on or off.

11:30

An immune system in a pretty clean world tends to be over exuberant over the slightest provocations. This translates to the immune system being programmed to make more inflammation – which is great at protecting us from wound injuries but also a lot of other side effects which lead to today’s diseases.

13:09

Every piece of permeability and plasticity that we have can also be turned for good. We’re not cursed by the DNA that our parents gave us. That stuff is there as a menu of options, but which recipe we order out of that menu is up to us. That’s something we can actually control.

15:47

Our DNAs are not strictly 100% identical to your DNA. But genetics is not a blackbox. Who you are right is a byproduct of your DNA, to some extent, but even moreso, your DNA working through your life experiences.

17:51

Vertical Transmission: Who you are today are also influenced to some extent by the life circumstances inhabited by your parents.

19:46

Methylation: Rendering a DNA deaf from incoming information to “turn off” a gene.

24:57

The life we live and circumstances we inhabit shape the way molecular biology of our bodies work and translates into a difference in the likelihood or speed of a disease.

28:04

Eudaimonic Happiness: Helps people stay healthy even though they’re confronting adverse life circumstances. The kind of happiness that comes from doing something good or important. People with a higher sense of purpose and engagement have shown good gene profiles.

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