Video: Lifestyle vs. Genes in Chronic Illness

Hello, Dr. Minkoff here. Today we’re going to discuss how lifestyle and genes play a role in chronic illness. So I want to take a moment to talk about a common misconception when it comes to chronic illness. Many people believe their genes are the primary factor in determining their health. Now, while genetics do play a role, they aren’t the deciding factor in whether or not you develop a chronic illness.

It’s probably 80% or 90% lifestyle, and 10% or maybe 20% genes as an overall factor in health. So just to give you an idea on this, I was a Pediatrician, and I used to run a neonatal intensive care unit. And when genes are bad, like inherited genes are really bad, those babies don’t make it through pregnancy. Or if they miscarry birth, and they have real bad chromosomes, like they have three of a certain one or they’re missing a piece of one.

Those babies are very sick at birth. Some of them survive. Like in the babies that have down syndrome, they have genetic abnormalities. They may live 20, or 30, or 40 years. They usually have heart problems and other things. But the real bad ones, they don’t make it very far. Maybe early childhood, maybe even before that. So if you’re someone who’s made it to 10 years old, 20 years old, 40 years old, 50 years old, and you were relatively okay, like you went to school and you went to the bathroom, and you ate, and you worked or you played, your genes are not bad.

Your lifestyle is what is influencing what’s wrong with you, not your genes. We’ve all got dealt a certain set of genes, and some of us got really good ones in some areas. And really like ones that don’t cope very well in other areas, and I like to use myself as an example because since about 2004, the human genome Project had been able to analyze and look at every gene in the human body.

There’s about 24, 25,000 genes that make up make us up and now there’s a lot of sophisticated testing. Where you can see, is the gene pattern in a certain area a normal one, or do you have a deviation from the normal one? And if you have a deviation, sometimes that’s an advantage for you, and sometimes it’s a disadvantage for you, depending on the environment that you’re in or what you’re being exposed to.

Now, some people have genes where they can run very, very fast and not build up lactic acid and they can be stellar athletes. Other people have genetics where they can hold their breath for a long time or they can undergo, you know, they can run hundreds of miles. You know, there’s. You can look at the various abilities of individuals. Sometimes it’s intelligence, sometimes people are gifted in music.

There is a genetic aspect to this, and we’ve all got our pluses and minuses. When the gene test started coming out, I would send my blood in to get the gene test. And when the gene test came back, it was like, man, I got dealt a bad deck here. Like, I got bad genes, you know, cardiovascular disease, this diabetes, you know, all this stuff. And I was like, oh, that’s terrible.

And then the next wave of gene tests would come out, and I’d order the test again, hoping that maybe the first one was a mistake, and I would get a better set. Well, I’ve now done this six times, and it remains the same. Okay? Now, I come from a family where there was early heart attacks. In my grandfather, my father had a heart attack at age 52. He had a bypass surgery when he was, like, 54.

This is back in the early, early 70’s. Okay? There’s diabetes in my family. There’s obesity in my family. And if you look at my brothers and sisters, they’ve all got these diseases. And partially through luck and partially through, I was always sort of searching for how can I improve my own body performance, my own body’s health. I don’t have any of these things. I don’t have heart disease or, you know, diabetes or any of these other things that are in my family because the lifestyle has overpowered the genes.

And that is probably true of almost everybody walking around. If you’re eating toxic food, and smoking, or vaping, or not exercising, or not getting enough sleep, or not managing your stressors, or not keeping your vitamin D level in a good range, or not taking vitamins and minerals, and essential fatty acids to keep your own cells healthy in an environment which is very challenging. You know, between the EMF, and all the toxins that are in the food, water, and air, that the weakness in your genes is gonna come out, because they’re gonna then take you down.

And if you can manage the weakness in your genes, you can stay on top of this thing and you can stay healthy, and productive, and live a good life. And so when we see someone in the clinic, part of our analysis is looking at several gene sets of theirs to see where do we have to shore these people up because they’re suffering from infections or toxins or whatever it is.

And there’s a lot of times where we can see, oh, this person needs extra vitamin B12, or extra folic acid, or their body’s not holding zinc very well, or they need some extra glutathione, these other things, so that we can counter the weak genetics, shore up the environmental area where they are, and then they can heal, and then they can thrive, and then they can feel good, and the only problem with them was they weren’t doing that.

And so they got sick, or they got ill too early, or they had a heart attack, or they had a stroke. So most of the time we can handle this, and there’s another side to this is that not only are you fed by the food and water that you drink, but you’re fed by the energy of the people that are around you, and some people don’t have good energy, or they’re intending that they feel best when you don’t feel best.

There are these people around, not a lot, but one of the things we have people look at is like who’s around you that is giving you the biggest stress, who’s making you feel bad, where you feel like you’re not good enough, you’re not big enough, you’re not smart enough, you’re not able enough, and to start looking at that because there really is only two kinds of people. There’s good people, and there’s bad people.

And the bad peoples’ job is to make other people feel bad, and if you just notice that, you know, sometimes you’re having a conversation with people, and you walk away from there, and you feel like it was, you know, did I say something wrong? Like I feel instead of feeling. When you have a conversation with someone where it’s a, where it’s really a good conversation, and they’re really a friend, you ought to feel bigger, better enabled from the interaction.

And when you don’t, that might be a problem. So it’s helpful if you realize that it probably isn’t you, it’s probably them. And then you don’t kind of introvert on it, and you can sort of hold yourself up and say, oh, that person’s over in that category rather than in this category. And so emotional well being has a huge effect on health, and well-being, and healing. And that’s big. factor in it.

Yesterday I was talking with a young man who had been under a very, very, very stressful situation in his life when he was five or six years old, where he’s a bit eccentric, he’s very bright, he’s very energetic, and the people in his environment thought that that made him abnormal. And rather than helping him to channel his energy into productive things they made him feel like there was something wrong with him.

And they sent him to psychiatrists who started to load him up with antidepressants; amphetamines. And this went on for about 15 years, and he knew this was wrong for him. He knew it felt bad for him, but he wasn’t able to sort of get out of it until he was about 18 years old. And then he went cold turkey, left the environment, weaned himself off all the drugs, and I’m seeing him now a couple years after that because he had actual medical situations which probably were present when he was very young, which contributed to this.

Probably got Lyme disease when he was very early, had a genetic abnormality where his neurotransmitters couldn’t quite be balanced, and we started to give him some things which would help him with his neurotransmitters, help him get rid of the Lyme disease. And he just starts to float up to being like this amazing young man. Amazing young man. And we were talking yesterday, and he said, you know, when I talk to you, he was talking about me,

I feel like my system heals just because I’ve had an interaction with someone who can just listen to me, and give me advices, which I know are going to help me out. And so as part of your journey, there are people in your environment who are like that. And actually, part of our clinic purpose is that the people that work here, their job is to make sure that happens with you.

And day after day, people who finish their programs here tell me, your staff is incredible. They care, they listen, they help me, they’re professional. And I said, that’s perfect, because what I want is an oasis where people can actually discharge all that stuff, get the right therapy so that their bodies can heal, and that will revive their spirit, and then they can go on and create. And another interesting conversation I had with someone yesterday, she for the last 15 years, 32 doctors later, I’m her 32nd doctor. She’s in here with her mother, and she says to me that she was having a conversation with another patient, and the patient said, you’re finishing, and you look good, and you feel good, and you’re going back home to Pennsylvania. What do you want to do? And she said, for the last 15 years, I was pretty sure I might not last another day or two.

And to someone asking me the question of what do I want to do now, she said, it was like a complete revelation to me, like I could now plan my life. And she’s only in her late 30’s of I now actually have a future, and I could actually look at my future as an opportunity rather than one more day of dread because my health is terrible, and I don’t know if I’m going to even be around.

So that’s us at LifeWorks. We are an oasis. We mean to help you heal on all aspects of your treatment care. Okay? Good.