What Role Does Lifestyle Play in Our Health? (and what role do our genes play?)

Lifestyle and health can be a touchy subject. Just as anything in wellness, we have a responsibility to find the balance between what is happening to us and what is happening in our lives because of things we do.

My entire philosophy regarding working with people on their wellness revolves around that principle. We, are not, in most cases, the victims we sometimes believe we are. We have our genetic weaknesses. We are blessed with opportunities that have been marked on our DNA by several generations of ancestors (our parents on up)—this is epigenetics.

Oftentimes, people feel cursed by the fate of their genes. “Blood pressure problems run in my family, so I’m just destined to end up on medication.” If I had a nickel for every time I heard a variation of that statement….

Well, hopefully I’d still care enough to be talking about this, but maybe I’d be doing it from my beach house….

Over the years, and through much research done by very passionate and intelligent people, we’ve come to a point where we know that genetics provide somewhere between 10-20% of the input into what our “fate” is in health and wellness.

That’s right—10-20%. That means the rest of it is up to us and the choices we make.

We have a depth of lifestyle choices. Epigenetics is the study of how our lifestyle choices impact how our genes are turned on and off (well, it’s a little bit more complicated than that…but what you really need to know is that if your Dad has heart disease, it doesn’t mean you have to as well). Your lifestyle will place markers on your DNA. YOU have control over your health outcomes—80-90% of them. Sometimes life is still not fair, and healthy-acting people still get diseases.

But.

Why not hedge your bets?

I’ve seen people do it in my corporate wellness coaching experiences.

I’ll tell you a story. A man, aged 40, had his cholesterol tested. It was high (270). The doctor wanted to put him on medication, but he wasn’t so sure about that (I’m not sure what his reasons were). He told me that his family ALL has high cholesterol—his parents, his siblings. They’re all on medication, and he’s not very happy about it but he believes it is his eventual fate.

My response is, “WAIT!”

{he thinks I’m crazy, but he listens}

I explain epigenetics, and tell him that maybe he can try to do it on his own for one year. I’ll help him–he can eat differently, and exercise more (he wasn’t exercising at all—he has a standing type of shop job, but he was not moving around very much).

He agreed, and we made a plan. He did a Couch to 5K plan. He added more healthy foods to his diet and took out the crap. He walks on his lunch break everyday. He ran a 5k, and then a 10k. He didn’t rush anything—just took it all day-by-day.

One year later (two weeks ago), his cholesterol was 170. He also lost 13lbs (he wasn’t overweight before, but he streamlined himself with all the running and not eating crap out of the vending machine).

🙂

In my everyday work, I interact with people regarding their health. I hear the pain and stress that health issues cause. I love helping people learn new information and gain a new perspective—one that empowers them to take control of their own health, rather than being a victim to it. I never promise that it will be easy—sometimes it’s simple in concept (i.e. eat better foods), but that doesn’t mean it will be easy to implement. I do promise people that if they put in the effort, they will yield benefits.

Readiness to change is another aspect of the story for another time…

Food, actions, and thought patterns determine 80-90% of your health. Go ahead and get mad at me, but it’s true 🙂

Then go read books by Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Junger, Kris Carr, Nina Planck, Catherine Shanahan and more… to figure out how to improve your life/health through your lifestyle.

p.s. I’d love to chat about it with you!