How To End Genetic Cycles
- What being a part of the divine means is that you don’t have your own nonsense any more. Where does your nonsense come from? A bit from your parents. A bit from the society in which you live. The rest, you cook it up. A bit from your genetics, a bit from the external impressions. Using these two things, you cook up the rest.
- What comes from the external situations is all too much fragmented, bits and pieces. Maybe this information is useful for your survival, it is. What comes from your genes? Charles Darwin told we were a monkey. If you say, “My genetics decide who I am,” the monkey business will not end, ever, because even now, your DNA is only 1.23% different from that of a chimpanzee. Your evolution is only that much. The more you depend on your genetics, the more of a monkey you become. I say a monkey because if you go by your genetics you become cyclical. If you travel this, one moment if you’re not alert you will go off at a tangent. If you go like this, you may slow down, you may hasten, you don’t go anywhere.
- Being on the path of the divine means, first thing to become free from your genetics. It is in this context we say Shiva. That means he has no parentage. He dropped it. He cleaned his mother and father out of him. No father, no mother, just him. Because genetics means repetition. Repetition means cyclical nature. Cyclical nature means you are going in circles, you are not going anywhere.
- This I business, with you reading bits and pieces of it, and please stop that. Don’t read all this stuff, me and my consciousness and my witness and where is the witness, witnessing the witness, witness, witness, witness, witness, witness. You can go on endlessly, witness, witness is the witness, and witness, what does the witness witness, witness, what does the witness witness, witness. This is a mental game. Ignorant people acting like they know. This is what happens. Philosophies will flash. Philosophies, the more philosophical a society is or the more philosophical a human being is, the more he is clearly declaring to the world that he is a pretender. What he does not know, he acts like it knows. Simple, practical people, they know they don’t know, and they’re proud that they don’t know. That’s a problem, but at least they know they don’t know.
- Do not get into this trap of intellectualizing the existence. Very confidently you use this word existence, but do you know what is existence? Does anybody know what is existence? Does anybody know? Nobody knows.
What is Epigenetics?
- Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression (active versus inactive genes) that do not involve changes to the underlying DNA sequence — a change in phenotype without a change in genotype — which in turn affects how cells read the genes. Epigenetic change is a regular and natural occurrence but can also be influenced by several factors including age, the environment/lifestyle, and disease state. Epigenetic modifications can manifest as commonly as the manner in which cells terminally differentiate to end up as skin cells, liver cells, brain cells, etc. Or, epigenetic change can have more damaging effects that can result in diseases like cancer. At least three systems including DNA methylation, histone modification and non-coding RNA (ncRNA)-associated gene silencing are currently considered to initiate and sustain epigenetic change.1 New and ongoing research is continuously uncovering the role of epigenetics in a variety of human disorders and fatal diseases.
The Evolving Landscape of Epigenetic Research: A Brief History
- What began as broad research focused on combining genetics and developmental biology by well-respected scientists including Conrad H. Waddington and Ernst Hadorn during the mid-twentieth century has evolved into the field we currently refer to as epigenetics. The term epigenetics, which was coined by Waddington in 1942, was derived from the Greek word “epigenesis” which originally described the influence of genetic processes on development. During the 1990s there became a renewed interest in genetic assimilation. This led to elucidation of the molecular basis of Conrad Waddington’s observations in which environmental stress caused genetic assimilation of certain phenotypic characteristics in Drosophila fruit flies. Since then, research efforts have been focused on unraveling the epigenetic mechanisms related to these types of changes.
- Currently, DNA methylation is one of the most broadly studied and well-characterized epigenetic modifications dating back to studies done by Griffith and Mahler in 1969 which suggested that DNA methylation may be important in long term memory function. Other major modifications include chromatin remodeling, histone modifications, and non-coding RNA mechanisms. The renewed interest in epigenetics has led to new findings about the relationship between epigenetic changes and a host of disorders including various cancers, mental retardation associated disorders, immune disorders, neuropsychiatric disorders and pediatric disorders.
Epigenetics and the Environment: How Lifestyle Can Influence Epigenetic Change from One Generation to the Next
- The field of epigenetics is quickly growing and with it the understanding that both the environment and individual lifestyle can also directly interact with the genome to influence epigenetic change. These changes may be reflected at various stages throughout a person’s life and even in later generations. For example, human epidemiological studies have provided evidence that prenatal and early postnatal environmental factors influence the adult risk of developing various chronic diseases and behavioral disorders. Studies have shown that children born during the period of the Dutch famine from 1944–1945 have increased rates of coronary heart disease and obesity after maternal exposure to famine during early pregnancy compared to those not exposed to famine. Less DNA methylation of the insulin-like growth factor II (IGF2) gene, a well-characterized epigenetic locus, was found to be associated with this exposure. Likewise, adults that were prenatally exposed to famine conditions have also been reported to have significantly higher incidence of schizophrenia.
- Research has also shown that a mother’s exposure to pollution could impact her child’s asthma susceptibility and her intake of vitamin D could change DNA methylation that influences placenta functioning. It doesn’t stop at the mother, however, as further studies support that the father has a hand in his child’s health and epigenetic marks as well.
How Lifestyle Can Affect Individual Epigenetics and Health
- Although our epigenetic marks are more stable during adulthood, they are still thought to be dynamic and modifiable by lifestyle choices and environmental influence. It is becoming more apparent that epigenetic effects occur not just in the womb, but over the full course of a human life span, and that epigenetic changes could be reversed. There are numerous examples of epigenetics that show how different lifestyle choices and environmental exposures can alter marks on top of DNA and play a role in determining health outcomes.
- The environment is being investigated as a powerful influence on epigenetic tags and disease susceptibility. Pollution has become a significant focus in this research area as scientists are finding that air pollution could alter methyl tags on DNA and increase one’s risk for neurodegenerative disease. Interestingly, B vitamins may protect against harmful epigenetic effects of pollution and may be able to combat the harmful effects that particular matter has on the body.
- Researchers have found that a ketogenic diet — consuming high amounts of fat, adequate protein, and low carbohydrates — increases an epigenetic agent naturally produced by the body.
- Diet has also been shown to modify epigenetic tags in significant ways. The field of nutriepigenomics explores how food and epigenetics work together to influence health and wellbeing. For example, a study found that a high fat, low carb diet could open up chromatin and improve mental ability via HDAC inhibitors. Other studies have found that certain compounds within the foods we consume could protect again cancer by adjusting methyl marks on oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes. Ultimately, an epigenetic diet may guide people toward the optimal food regimen as scientific studies reveal the underlying mechanisms and impact that different foods have on the epigenome and health.
DNA Activation was originally published in Extreme Life Goals on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.