Are you taking medications and wondered if they are the right ones for you? If you have been taking them for a long time, have you been concerned that they might be adversely reacting with each other or taking a toll on your long-term health? Are the doses too high or too low?
Functional Medicine is a medical approach which involves testing for the underlying causes of disease and designing a treatment plan to address the root cause of the disorder, not just the symptoms. It views and treats the body as a whole, integrated system. Many...
Ever since I was a bright-eyed and bushy tailed medical student, roaming the hallowed halls of the University of Virginia Medical School over 40 years ago, the mantra of modern medicine was drilled into my head, that all disease is caused by two factors – genetic...
A famous best-seller, The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, by psychologist Judith Rich Harris, has been circulating for 20 years. Based on amassed studies, parental influences on children matter a lot less than peer group influences, and they both matter less than genetic factors. Parents are advised to not blame themselves if their children don’t become Rhodes scholars, because controlling peer group influences is difficult and controlling genetic expression is impossible. Until the last few years, parents were expected to do the best they can to control the friends that their children hang out with, and hope that their children’s genes will line up well enough to someday produce a productive, happy member of society.
A human being’s genetic blueprint is housed in our 23 chromosomes which is where the name of the genetic test “23andMe” gets its name. Each of our 23 chromosomes has an average of about 1000 genes, and each gene has an average of about 100 quirky substitutions, which are sometimes referred to as mutations or polymorphisms. These millions of quirky substitutions partly explains why we are all so delightfully unique in the way we look, think, act and feel about life’s challenges. Most of these mutations or polymorphisms are not considered to be detrimental, but a handful could be important under certain circumstances and cause serious diseases and other health problems, which is why it is important to know about them.
The human genome was mapped only 13 years ago, and already it is changing healthcare. Genetic testing can identify common, important and modifiable quirky genes called SNPs, or single nucleotide polymorphisms, which create vulnerabilities to many kinds of allergic,...
Given the exuberant response to the article Methylation 101: What it Means for Your Health, I have been encouraged to write a second article to continue the discussion. In the first article, I introduced the idea that those with “methylation defects” are relatively less capable of methylating away the fight/flight neurotransmitter noradrenalin and are thus likely to incur a more heightened and sustained stress response from stressors of any cause. Having a heightened tendency to be motivated by extra stress, the up-side of having methylation defects can compel such people to have increased drive to succeed and be more productive!
Methylation, a Chemical Reaction Critical to Life We are carbon-based creatures, chock full of carbon containing molecules. So it should come as little surprise to you that one of the most important chemical reactions in all of life simply sticks one carbon and 3...
Health is the most important “possession” you have. Unfortunately, health comes with a price in time, energy and money. Additionally we all have certain handicaps that we begin the health and life journey which must be overcome to live a healthier life. These...
Do you feel like you are not getting enough sleep? If so, you may find that you experience a wide variety of health problems. These medical problems tend to become additive over time-and according to a study at the University of Surrey in England reported in...
Parenting Has Limits The best-seller and Pulitzer Prize finalist, The Nurture Assumption, Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, by Judith Rich Harris makes a compelling case, based on sound research on identical twins and other data, that within reasonable...