Your DNA is NOT your future

CPR for Life

What if I told you that you could rewrite your genetics? That just because your parents died early, doesn't mean that you will. This is the science of epigenetics. Today we talk with leading expert Dr. Shimul Chowdhury about our genes NOT being our fate.

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welcome to CPR for Life, everyone. I often meet people who think they are screwed because of their family history. They say things like, everyone in my family dies early from heart disease. So why shouldn't I just enjoy my Big Mac and cigarettes? They feel powerless against their genetic destiny.

Today's guest is going to help us realize that we have much more control of this destiny than we might think, both for ourselves and maybe even for our kids.

He's an incredibly smart guy using his knowledge to help improve lives, particularly those of children. But before I introduce him, And we start talking to them. I wanted to give a little bit more introduction to epigenetics because probably most people haven't heard of it. It's relatively new, only been around for about 40 plus years.

And we'll go into exactly what it is for when we talk to our guests. But before that, I just wanted to give some examples. Of what it means. Some cool examples of epigenetics playing a role. Or that fruit lies. We'll change the shape of their bodies and their wings. And response to different environmental factors like temperature.

These epigenetic changes can even be passed down. Two children.

There was an unfortunate time called the Dutch hunger winter. During world war II. Where Germany cut off food to the Netherlands. And so people were starving, including pregnant women that were malnourished. And so the children. We're born . Had a much higher risk of developing obesity and other metabolic diseases. Because that malnutrition. Changed expression and genes.

And then literature is showing that their relationships between how genes are expressed and things like high blood pressure, aging, diabetes. , high cholesterol, for example, there've been discoveries of certain genes. That when epigenetically changed, affect how atherosclerosis. Develops that's the plaque inside the blood vessels that can lead to heart attacks. That can also change how high your cholesterol levels are.

as another example, chronic stress, particularly traumatic stress. Can alter the expression of genes and can make a person even more sensitive to stress. It's like a vicious loop and of course everything's connected to everything. And one example of that is that stress can alter the microbiome and then the resulting changes in what those bacteria in the gut produce can change gene expression. So after

That I really do need to mention two things. Number one, take the CPR stress course. You'll find it at www.cprhealthclinic.com/stress, and two… eat your vegetables. And your fruits and your whole grains and your legumes.

Anyway, that's enough of my long introduction to the topic. Let's get to our guest. Dr. Shimul Chowdhury is a board certified clinical molecular geneticist who's also the vice president of lab operations for Clear Note Health and also works closely with the Rady Children's Institute. for genomic medicine. Additionally, he's a researcher with many peer reviewed publications. Welcome, Dr. Chowdhury.

Thanks, Dr. Thanks for having me.

So tell us, Shimul, what's your background? How did you get into genetics? What do you do?

I've always had a lot of interest in genetics from an early age, even just working in laboratories. The first lab I was in was a genetics lab where they were looking at DNA and making diagnoses of genetic diseases from the tests that they were running in the laboratories.

So my career has really been focused on Genetics and epigenetics will be talking about today and its impact on human health and kind of the role that I have is I have a PhD background, so I spent a lot of time in the lab, but really trying to be a bridge between the laboratory. And physicians and clinical practice.

So taking some of these technologies to look at genetics and epigenetics, how we can use them to improve human health, either through diagnosis or risk prediction things like that and trying to take some of this, these complex scientific concepts and make it understandable for physicians and for patients.

So I've been. involved in, developing multiple tests that are used clinically. Now talk to a lot of different physicians and been part of different clinical studies to make sure we're doing it responsibly and doing it right. So yeah, it's been a passion of mine for a long time and, been able to apply it into pediatric setting as well as in the adult oncology setting that I'm sure we'll.

Touch base on a little bit as the podcast goes along. So yeah, it's an exciting concept, exciting field. And , yeah, I'm very excited to talk more about it.

, and as people learn what the genetics, epigenetics is, I think they'll get more excited too. But first question for you, I ask everybody, what's your definition of health?

Oh, that's a good question. My definition of health is being in balance in all aspects of your life. I guess that's physical is a big part of it. Mental, social, spiritual, and they all play off of each other. And yeah I think they all can influence each other. So trying to. To maintain a balance of that is I think something we're all trying to strive for.

I would agree with that. So tell me, Now, take us into epigenetics, first off, describing what the old paradigm of just genetics is or used to be, and how epigenetics adds to that.

Yeah, , so I would think of it this way for folks. Again, people may or may not be aware of just like the fundamentals of genetics. We have these four letters that are our genetic code, A's, C's, T's, and G's. And we have 3 billion letters pairs of letters in our DNA sequence. And that's the, and that's the code of life.

So these strings of letters. Code for genes, which code for proteins that do all the functions of our body help develop our organs, determine our appearance things like that. And we have these trillions of cells in our bodies that all have the same. DNA, right? The same genetic code, but obviously they do different things.

They have different functions. And one of the main reasons for that is the epigenetics side of things. So epi, like the prefix of it, the EPI part literally means on top. So upon the DNA. And so what is happening in epigenetics is basically you have these modifications that are happening on top of the DNA sequence that impact the expression of genes.