Connection between food and DNA

DonnaB · August 3, 2006

I found this article on AOL about food and genomic interaction. There's not a lot of new information here, but it's never a waste of time to possibly gain a new perspective - maybe turn on a lightbulb over our heads!

Awaken Your Fat-Burning DNA

Dr. Mark Hyman discusses the interaction

between genes & weight-loss.

Listen to Dr. Hyman's Podcast

Dr. Mark Hyman, author of 'UltraMetabolism,' talks with AOL's Book Maven Bethanne Patrick about the role genes play in your diet and weight-loss plan. Here are excerpts from the interview:

Bethanne Patrick: Oh, it's great to talk with you and this is so exciting. Your book is about nutrigenomics, can you explain to us what that is and then we'll talk a little bit more about your background.

Dr. Mark Hyman: This is a whole new wave of medicine that's emerging based on science and nobody's hearing about it. It's really how food talks to our genes and turns on messages of health or disease, weight loss or weight gain, and it's called nutrigenomics.

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Bethanne Patrick: Wow that's something I don't think any of us ever really thought about. Is that why I love bacon so much?

Dr. Mark Hyman: Probably not. I don't know if it's sending the right messages.

Bethanne Patrick: So explain to us, when you say 'food talking to your genes,' what kinds of messages are you describing?

Dr. Mark Hyman: Most of us think of our DNA as sort of locked in our body, waiting to be passed onto our children, but in fact your DNA at every moment is interacting with your environment, interacting with every bite of food you take, interacting with your thoughts, your feelings, and various things, so when you take a bite of food, literally, the information -- beyond the calories in the food -- goes right into your cells, into your DNA, and switches on genes, or turns off genes based on what information is in that food.

Bethanne Patrick: So, DNA is interactive.

Dr. Mark Hyman: It's like the software for your body. If you are not giving it the right messages to start the gene activation that leads to your metabolism, it's going to lead to weight gain and disease. The whole book Ultra Metabolism is based on the notion of this revolution in medicine -- that if we live in a way that's in harmony with our genes, we can fit into our jeans.

Bethanne Patrick: You use the analogy that putting the wrong food into your body is like putting diesel fuel into a regular car.

Dr. Mark Hyman: Exactly. I mean, would you think of feeding your dog French fries, a Big Mac and a Coke? No. We know that there's something wrong with [feeding] that to a dog. Yet we feed that to our children. These foods are not what [we have] adapted to from an evolutionary point of view. So if we live in a way that's more akin to how our bodies were designed then everything takes care of itself.

Bethanne Patrick: Tell me about how you found out about nutrigenomics and ultra metabolism. Do you have a lot of experience in this field? Where does it come from?

Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, I always call myself the accidental weight loss doctor because I never started out seeking to help people lose weight. People came to me with health issues, and I saw people who tried everything. My job was to be a medical detective to figure out the underlying causes of their problems. When I took care of the underlying health problems based on this new science nutrigenomics, the pounds took care of themselves. People just lost weight, without even trying. For example, yesterday I saw a woman who came to see me in November because she was tired and fatigued, had digestive issues and had many, many, many other issues and she was overweight. Three months later she came back and she lost 37 pounds.

Bethanne Patrick: Wow.

Dr. Mark Hyman: I didn't even recognize her and I didn't tell her to lose weight. I never tell people to go on a diet or lose weight, I said 'here's how you eat in a way that works with your body, rather than against it' and when you do that the natural intelligence and wisdom of the body takes care of the rest.

Bethanne Patrick: [What are] these seven myths about obesity? What is the starvation myth?

Dr. Mark Hyman: The starvation myth is the idea that if we eat less and exercise more we will lose weight, and unfortunately, when we do that, when we starve ourselves or restrict our calories, we trigger a primitive survival response that drives us to compensate by overeating. We all have the experience, for example, of starving yourself all day, skipping Breakfast, light lunch or maybe not at all, and then you get home and what happens? You clean out the refrigerator.

Bethanne Patrick: Exactly!

Dr. Mark Hyman: And then you feel sick. Of course, we've done that over and over again. Now the first time you might do it you might think, 'Oh well, I shouldn't do this again because it's going to make me feel sick.' But how many times have all of us done that? Why? That's how our bodies are programmed. So if you eat less than your basic needs, if you starve yourself, you'll always backfire, you'll gain the weight back, and you'll probably gain back even a little bit more. People gain an average of five pounds for every diet they go on.

Bethanne Patrick: The second one is the calorie myth. What's that about?

Dr. Mark Hyman: If you look at how calories actually work in your body, different foods have different properties beyond [their] calories. For example, if I [drink] a Coca-Cola which is pure sugar, it goes straight to my bloodstream. It turns on messages that make me gain weight. If I eat a diet that's full of Fiber and whole foods that has the equivalent amount of calories it has a different effect. Doctor David Ludwig, one of the top scientists and researchers in obesity in the world at Harvard, did a study with three different groups of kids and gave them three different breakfasts: oatmeal, field cut oats and omelets, exactly the same calories. What's fascinating is that the kids that ate the oatmeal were hungrier, they ate 80 percent more food that day and their biochemistry was different; their cholesterol was higher.

Bethanne Patrick: Really? The oatmeal eating group?

Dr. Mark Hyman: Oatmeal enters the bloodstream quickly. The omelet group had sort of a slow-burn effect. In other words, the calories were released slowly into the bloodstream and they didn't trigger these hormonal responses and these genetic responses that trigger us to eat more and be hungrier.

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Bethanne Patrick: The third one is the fat myth.

Dr. Mark Hyman: The fat myth is the idea that if we restrict fat we will lose weight. The Women's Health Initiative shows us that low-fat diets don't really help. And I think that the real important point here is that it's the type of fat that you eat that makes the difference. I think one of the things we don't realize is that if we eat a diet full of trans-fat or the steak fats that are in processed food, it really goes to a part of our genes, turns on messages that make us gain weight, that slows metabolism, that makes us have more inflammation, that makes it more likely that we get diabetes. If we eat the right fat [like] Omega-3 from fish oil, flax seeds, walnuts and seaweed, they will turn on the genes that make us lose weight.

Bethanne Patrick: The carb myth is sort of is the same thing.

Dr. Mark Hyman: I say to people that carbohydrates are the single most important thing you need for long term health and weight loss. That goes in the face of what a lot of people are saying right now. The reason I say that is carbohydrates are the source of all the Vitamins and minerals and what we call phytonutrient or plant chemicals that help us stay healthy. Things like fruits and vegetables, whole grains, Beans, nuts and seeds -- these are all carbohydrates.

Bethanne Patrick: But they're good carbohydrates.

Dr. Mark Hyman: Absolutely. It's the ones that are processed and refined and full of sugar that are bad for us.

Bethanne Patrick: The sumo-wrestler myth is about skipping meals. Love that name.

Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah, well sumo wrestlers are made, not born. The way they're made is actually the way most Americans live. Like a sumo wrestler, they wake up, they may skip Breakfast, they do a little activity and then they eat a huge meal and go to bed. When you skip breakfast and eat dinner before you go to bed, you're going to gain weight because your metabolism slows at night. When you fall asleep with a full stomach you're guaranteed to gain weight.

Bethanne Patrick: The French paradox myth is myth number six. Why is that?

Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, we think that the French are healthy and don't have heart disease because they drink wine and eat butter, and that's not true. Actually, they're getting more sick and more overweight because we're not only spreading Democracy, we're spreading obesity across the globe, including in Europe. What they used to do was eat real unprocessed and whole foods.

Bethanne Patrick: So that's the key -- the unprocessed.

Dr. Mark Hyman: They ate fresh food. They went to the market place every day and walked, because that was how their villages were set up. They also enjoyed their food. They didn't have the two minute lunch, they had the two hour lunch, and when we have pleasure and enjoyment with food our digestion and metabolism is geared to burn more calories than when we're stressed. When we eat at our desk, we're actually going to shut down our metabolism.

Bethanne Patrick: The final myth is the 'Protector Myth.' What is the protector myth?

Dr. Mark Hyman: The protector myth is the notion that government regulations and policies around the food industry out there is helping us to stay healthy and protect us from harm. I think that's unfortunately a very sad notion. The food industry makes up 12% of our gross national product and employs 17 percent of the labor force. And it spends 33 billion dollars a year marketing junk food to consumers. Only 2% of the 33 billion dollars is spent on marketing fruits, vegetables and healthy food. We're in a crisis because the only thing you can buy when you go on the road is food that's highly processed, devoid of all nutrients, that's full of calories and that actually turns on genes that make you gain weight and get sick. The entire food industry – the restaurant industry, the diet industry, hospitals, drug industry -- everybody profits from people being sick and overweight. The whole system's backwards. We need to stand up for policy changes that can help, such as getting junk food and vending machines out of schools and stop advertising of junk food to children and so forth.

Bethanne Patrick: If people are interested in this, where can they go to get more information? You've got a great website.

Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah, www.ultrametabolism.com/aol, they can actually download a free sneak preview of the book. I've convinced my publisher to offer this online which allows people to get a sneak preview. If they're interested then, they can go ahead and get the book. My DVD is available for the UltraMetabolism PBS show, which they can watch on their local stations or get a copy as well.