NB. Most of this blog is based on recent human research, but we can relate it all to our horses too.

Have you heard of ‘epigenetics’? If you’ve managed to wade through our Immunity section on this website without your eyes glazing over, you may have found a small paragraph on epigenetics at the bottom of the ‘Fix the cell to get well’ page, but understandably you may have glossed over it, as the science-y word ‘Apoptosis’ was in the para title as well. I mean, what the heck is that? Fair cop …

However – epigenetics is becoming a new buzz word in the science world, and just as well because it’s a seriously cool process in the body – it’s about how lifestyle choices influence every-thing, including how the body’s genes express themselves.

To sum it up in shorthand, epigenetics is how everything we’re all exposed to throughout our life (so we’re talking biology, genes, environment, social relationships, diet and so on) impacts how the body's genes are expressed - whether human or horse. You may have also seen me quote the saying, "Genes load the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger." Never a truer word …

There are about 20,000 genes that make up the human genome, with the equine gene set being a similar number. Every protein, cell, and molecule that make our bodies who we are comes from the genes that are given to us by our parents, and those genes never change.

However, how our genes then express themselves can change. For sure, some genetic variants may make us more susceptible to chronic disease than others, but through the power of that magic word epigenetics, we can change how our genes are expressed by altering the environment we expose them to internally, for better or worse.

The APOE4 gene, for example, is linked to a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease but that doesn’t mean it's a life sentence, because even though we can’t change our genes, they’re not our fate – they’re only part of the story. If we eat a high-quality diet, incorporate daily movement, get plenty of rest and sunshine, manage our stress, and limit our exposure to toxins, our genes (and how they express themselves) will be more likely to promote health and longevity.

However, if we’re chronically stressed, eating junk, drinking too much vino, not exercising, and not getting enough sleep, this puts a lot of stress on our bodies, damages our DNA, and expresses genes that are consistent with disease.

To a degree our bodies, whether horse or human, are equipped to handle stress. We all have natural – and very sophisticated - detoxification and antioxidant systems built inside of us that work hard to keep inflammation at bay, but … it’s a toxic world out there. We’re constantly being exposed to stressors, even if we practice a healthy lifestyle, so it's inevitable that we'll accumulate some damage along the way as we age.

There is a silver lining though. Epigenetics can also help repair the wear and tear that happens as we all age. Using tools like nutrition, exercise, sleep and relaxation, we can change the body's genes' environment to modulate gene expression to promote health. Which is pretty awesome.

So how does this happen?

This is where DNA methylation comes in. Methylation is a biochemical process that occurs in our bodies billions of times every second. Cell division, DNA repair, detoxification, development, and so much more – it all depends on this thing called methylation. But how does this fundamental-for-life process work? And what's the connection to epigenetics and gene expression?

🤓Science Alert!🤓 For methylation to occur, a methyl group (-CH3 - that’s a carbon element attached to three hydrogen atoms) - is added to, or removed, from the body's DNA, hormones, neurotransmitters and immune cells. When a gene is methylated, that usually means the gene is turned off. When a gene has little-to-no methyl groups, that means the gene is turned on. Whether we want a gene turned on or off depends on the methylation of that specific gene. (Now rinse and repeat ...)

Basically, DNA methylation is responsible for how our genes express themselves at any given moment and can shift our biology to have either a positive or negative effect.

An example - we all want our tumour suppressor genes turned on all the time to prevent the devastating proliferation of cancer cells, because if tumour suppressor genes are turned off, tumours can develop.

Think of it like this: genes are the body’s hardware and epigenetics are like the software. And unless we’ve been living under a rock where smartphones/tablets/laptops/smart tvs haven’t crossed our path at all, we should all by now know that software is something that can be debugged, tweaked and upgraded to make life a whole lot more convenient and pleasurable.

This is what this blog is all about - understanding, demystifying, and harnessing this thing known as epigenetics, and hopefully unravelling what can appear to be a complicated science-alert subject into a way we can actually understand and put into effect, to help not only us but our horses as well. We’re talking about how to prevent disease and reverse aging (seriously), as well as lessening the impact of stress and trauma at any stage of life, which is why epigenetics is an incredible area of current research that can help us do amazing stuff, because believe it or not, our genetics aren’t set in stone, even if we’re already well into adulthood.

And of course, being EquiNatural, we’ll be going into the amazing connection of plant phytochemicals for health and aging, way beyond their antioxidant properties, and how to get more of these into both our and our horses’ lives.

This is a relatively new area of research that provides tremendous hope for changing the operating system of the body’s biology, so let’s dive in and learn how to upgrade the body’s software.

“When you put all this together, this transforms all of healthcare. This transforms all of medicine. This to me is the thing that we’ve been looking for.”
Dr. Jeff Bland, Big Bold Health, one of the leading companies studying immuno-rejuvenation through the rediscovery of ancient food crops and super foods

Science these days is at an incredibly exciting time of advancement – the last decade has without doubt been the decade of the microbiome, and we’re now edging into the natural laws of body systems' biology as the scientists understand more about how genetics and environment interact.

Biology is actually incredibly complex because unlike physics, there are just so many variables thanks to billions of chemical reactions happening in the body every second - we're all one big chemical machine. And when you start to think about how science is now measuring this, looking at all the different influences, I mean, how does even one molecule, let’s say one tiny molecule of vitamin C, find its natural receptor in all the billions of blood vessels and tissues and cells? How does it even know where to go? It’s all a biological miracle 😉.

And … what’s being studied now is helping us to rethink our approach to disease in a powerful way. Historically, we’ve always believed that our genes are pretty fixed, that our genes are our destiny; that we evolve through natural selection and have pretty hardwired genetic traits that are unmovable. Yet today's science is now learning that it’s the opposite – for sure the genes, the body’s hardware, is fixed, but the software, the code – the epigenetics – is changeable 😉.

The way our genes ‘express’ themselves is highly influenced by everything around us, our entire environment, and this is known as imprinting. So how do we modify our lifestyle to drive us towards health? Or looking at it another way, how is it driving us toward disease? How can we understand this whole field of epigenetics? And what can we, us, you and me, actually do to modify our - and our horse's - genetic code and reverse disease, and even reverse biological aging at any age?

* Warning – animal testing statement, because this is where we have to start.

We’re talking mice being used for research on diabetes and obesity, and a particular breed of mouse that was historically known for getting genetically ill and not living as long as most mice, so it was studied as a disease model for diet and lifestyle-related diseases like obesity.

So, the scientists fed the pregnant dam mouse very high levels of specific nutrients of vitamin B12, vitamin B6 and folic acid in methylated form, a more bioabsorbable form that has a significant positive impact on many biochemical reactions in the body.

What happened? The mice that were then born from that dam mouse were like no other mice that had ever been seen before, and more importantly, as they grew older, they didn’t get obese, nor did they get the diseases that their parents got. They also lived almost 35% longer, so the scientists scratched their heads and wondered what the heck was going on?

So they started studying and found out that by feeding high levels of these methylating nutrients, they were able to imprint the DNA, aka the genome (which is the complete set of the body’s genetic instructions), of the dam and that of the offspring, so that they then didn't express those characteristics that were locked into the genes of the mother that had produced years of generations of obese and disease-prone mice. WIth me so far?

Basically, these methylated B-vitamins were able to change which genes were turned on and off - the disease genes were switched off and the health and longevity genes were switched on.

Obviously the human - and horse - body is way more complex, but what these initial tests showed was that for the first time ever, it was discovered that a series of nutrients could actually reprogram how genes were expressed. And since those original studies were published, extraordinary amounts of work have been done much more precisely, to where literally hundreds of scientists around the world are now studying this concept of modulation of the epigenome (sorry, more science - the epigenome is the set of chemical modifications to the DNA and DNA-associated proteins in the cell, which alter gene expression, and are heritable).

Okay, let’s do a quick summary

Science now know that we can regulate our function based on the experiences that we have in our lives at imprint, as in prenatal influences. But - the question is, do we have these same capabilities as a later-aged adult - can our genes still be modulated, as in, can we change our genes after we’ve been born?

The answer is … Yes we can! Science has discovered that even in the adult, there are still a series of genes that regulate many other genes, sitting upstream of a lot of other genes that can still be imprinted and modulated epigenetically by experiences that we have, meaning throughout all of our life, and not just in foetal development or in infancy. It’s been found that there are maybe hundreds of these genes, which means – and this is a biggie - our genes are not our destiny and we can actually make choices in our life and implement protocols - medical protocols, nutraceutical protocols, lifestyle protocols - that can influence the future, instead of an almost certain future of dementia, diabetes or heart disease, to name a few dead certs.

Another example. We all pretty much well known now that following a Mediterranean diet can reverse biological age and keep us healthy. Another study by Dr Kara Fitzgerald in her book Younger You: Reverse Your Bio Age - and Live Longer, Better (which I thoroughly recommend and from where a lot of this blog came from) used lifestyle intervention, showing a reversal biological age of up to three years. And other studies show that using various kinds of medication that effect aging, i.e. various kinds of mitochondrial regulators, can influence the biological age as well.

So whether we’re looking at diet, or a multimodal intervention via functional medicine, or pharmacological interventions, there’s increasing evidence that we can not only stop, but actually reverse our biological age, which will also determine our health because we’re only as healthy as our biological age. And lets face it - the single biggest risk factor for every disease is age.

So how do we start to think about this?

Let’s start at the biology – let’s look at changes in diet, or various supplements, or various medications that can actually influence the epigenome, and delve a little deeper into methylation, because this seems to be the key that regulates and turns the epigenome on and off, determining which proteins get made, which affects which part of the body is working or not working, because proteins in the body are what DNA is made of - DNA is simply an assembly line for new proteins. So, if we look at the effect on proteins, and the changes in proteins that happen with the epigenome, this seems to be where it all starts.

Now let’s talk about ‘energy’, as in a vibe or vitality, as in the energy we project - never mind humans (I know plenty that I want to run a mile from, without having even met or spoken with), but how many horses have we met that project a profound 'energy'?! There’s a concept that the ‘energy’ that we’re involved with, that we’re exposed to, or that we give off to others, is an energy that transforms itself into a material influence on the molecular actions of our body and affects how our genes are expressed.

I know this sounds a little whacky, but believe me when I say it influences our genes and how they’re expressed. Our interaction with our environment, our social factors, the people we interact with, our sense of fulfilment, our appreciation of being alive, feeling supported, being in a community, being loved - these are all signals that are picked up by our genes and ultimately epigenetically modify our genes.

This is what connects socialisation, anthropology, sociology, psychology. It hardwires itself into each and every one of our biological system’s thinking, and ultimately how we look at it all. This is what’s so amazing about it – it’s all doable by practicing ‘life’ in a positive way. We can send the right signals to our genes that modulate these epigenetic patterns in such a way as to favourably express our bliss genes. And ... they can equally downregulate the expression of our negative genes.

If you look at the big picture, ultimately this transforms all healthcare, and all medicine. Scientists can measure before and after methylation patterns in people involved with lifestyle changes; they can measure the effect that diet has, the effect of exercise and sleep effects on the epigenome, and what happens when a person is loved versus unloved.

The University of North Carolina medical school has related the concept not only in psychiatry and psychoneuroimmunology (yep, that's a thing!), but also in the field of molecular genetics, publishing papers that are truly revolutionary showing that under control conditions in both animal models and in humans, social deprivation, anxiety, stress and fear all send signals to the epigenome that completely modulates it, as well as the stress survival fight/flight hormonal cortisol and epinephrine responses.

It literally means that the interface between all this and the epigenome are now singularly being defined as being connected in the whole field of healthcare. We’re talking being able to treat the whole person to modulate their genes to be performing at optimal enlightenment. We can actually change harmful epigenetic tags, even after we’re born, by doing modifications in life and lifestyle.

And here’s another fascinating thing - these tags can be cross-generational. As in, it's been shown that the epigenome of children or grandchildren of Holocaust survivors are naturally imprinted with changes that lead to increase in anxiety, psychosocial stresses, and a whole series of health consequences that are really staggering. But it can then be un-tagged, because there’s this control system on the epigenome which can be modified through various types of interventions, to improve the genes to create health from the ones that create disease, which means ... we can now literally be rescued from our bad genes.

Every bite of food we eat influences our genes through this mechanism; our nutrient status, our activity and exercise, sleep, stress of all kinds, our relationships, love or lack of love – they all modify the epigenome in ways that are actionable and changeable, and frankly, astonishing.

And we can even change the process of aging on our genome. We can not only stop aging and stop chronic diseases, but we can literally reverse them. And that’s why some of these new studies are so remarkable, showing the DNA methylation patterns that change with intervention.

So how does this change medicine for us?

So, given that the scientists now know this mechanism, that they now understand how relationships, thoughts, feelings, toxic exposures, activities, sleep, diet, and everything else influences our genes - how does this change medicine for us? Because we know they’re all linked by a very few common mechanisms and systems in the body via a few common laws of biology.

When those underlying systems are dysregulated and disturbed in the ways that we’re talking about, through inflammation, mitochondrial function, detoxification, hormonal regulation, gut function - all the stuff we talk about here on EquiNatural for our horses - and let’s not also forget that our gut microbes are listening to our every thought ... let’s also not forget that we’ve got to be seriously nice to those bugs in there because they’re affecting how we feel and what we think, our disease risks and everything else.

Long and short, we now have this amazing opportunity to rethink disease from the bottom up. We can look at aging and disease differently because we now understand that there’s this imprint that regulates everything about health.

These days, and whether horse or human, we know that there are essential amino acids that we have to get from our diet, i.e. lysine and methionine. There are essential fatty acids that we have to get like omega-3; interestingly it's said that there’s no such thing as an essential carbohydrate because we don’t actually need them to live, hence why people do so well on a ketogenic diet. That said, there may be a missing part of the jigsaw here in that while the actual starch itself is not essential, the components that come with carbohydrates, i.e. phytochemicals in plants, are actually very essential. You just have to look at the polyphenols in cacao, for example, and the research that’s coming out now about the incredible health benefits in it.

Let’s talk about where there are deficiencies, and not just in vitamins and minerals, but also a deficiency of phytochemicals that we need to include in our diet every single day. They regulate our immune system, our microbiome, brain chemistry, hormones, our structural system - everything is controlled by these phytochemicals. Food is absolutely medicine, it’s information. Food is immuno-rejuvenation, it’s epigenetics, it’s biological clocks, and it connects to DNA methylation in immune cells and white blood cells.

So, how can we change our diet; what phytochemicals can we take to actually help improve and regulate the epigenome to create health and longevity and a long health span? We’re not just talking antioxidants; we’re talking specific targeted molecules that signal the messages to our genes in unique ways to modulate how our genes express their function. This is a much more powerful, directed, natural pharmacology than antioxidants - it’s about different bioflavonoids, different members of the polyphenol family having different effects on different cells to produce different outcomes.

Take one of my favourites - resveratrol. it’s different to EGCG (from green tea), which is different to curcumin, which is different to quercetin. They have different impacts upon cell biology, but the new ‘Aha!’ discovery is that all of these regulate the epigenome in such a way that they can help switch on and off messages to rejuvenate cellular function and give us the full potential of our genetic arsenal of fabulous-ness.

This is powerful new science. It puts all this together to say, we are part of how we eat. We are part of the way those plants were growing, and part of the soil in which those plants were nourished. Plants have the ability to respond to their environmental stress, whether its biological stress from organisms like infection, or environmental stress such as too hot, too cold, not enough water, whatever ... plants activate their genes epigenetically to produce their own phytochemicals.

When we eat the right plants that have those messenger molecules that create the same exact effects in our bodies, it connects plant health to soil health to human – and horse - health. It’s changing our exposure to toxins, determining outcomes in terms of health and disease, and science now understands how to actually modify them. They now know, for example, that if a baby, mother, grandmother is exposed to glyphosate, then those markers from the glyphosate are going to cause cancer and endocrine disruption and all sorts of problems two generations down. And we all know how much glyphosate is in much of today's horse feeds. (Which is why here at EquiNatural we're all about organic ...)

But the good news? We can undo those markers through three various interventions - lifestyle, diet and environment.

So, pulling this altogether, how is the future looking?

What are doctors going to be testing? What are they going to be recommending? And how is that going to impact the path of chronic illness and death?

Here’s a thing. Let’s for a moment go back to something that we’ve no doubt all experienced in life, or at the very least know someone who has – an experience of some kind of trauma.

If we think about Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, this is a condition where the genes have been imprinted so strongly by a traumatic event that they’re locked into a cycle of hyper-vigilance, as it relates to the activation of their immune response and the fight/flight adrenaline/cortisol response.

So, is it possible to modify people with PTSD? These people have had extreme examples of such acute stress that have then heavily marked their genes to create alarm responses in their daily living, no matter what environment they find themselves. This is one area that’s being looked at as we speak, specifically a ‘hub gene’ which is abbreviated as F-K-B-P-5.

This hub gene is controlling the activity of the glucocorticoid receptor, which relates to rogue cortisol responses activated when the body is in a state of PTSD. So, the first question is, how does PTSD get turned on into a hyper[functioning way in the first place? It does so because it gets negatively epigenetically modified, which switches off what would normally suppress its activity, which means it then goes wild, with rampant cortisol coarsing through the body. But can we then modify the epigenetic control of the FKBP5 gene by reprogramming the epigenome? The answer appears to be ... Yes, we can.

What the science has learned is that the more traumatic a situation, the more the epigenome becomes more imprinted. So how are these imprints undone? What are the techniques, the tools, the systems, the mechanisms? Is it seriously just about consuming certain vitamins?

Of course it’s a whole lot bigger than that, bringing in the whole arsenal of tools that have historically been marginalised in medicine - stress reduction, behavioural modification, cognitive therapy, exercise, meditation even - all factors that are now signalling to the genes to re-establish a different imprint on those genes that regulate PTSD.

It's not just about a script of antidepressants – they’re only a small part of the bigger picture of imprinting those genes that regulate these responses, that give the body this heightened place of alarm that prevents us from sleeping, that keep us tired and wired and miserable. But science is really seeing a better understanding of the emerging biology for the body to be more healthily balanced.

Overall it’s about the Big Picture - the microbiome, the toxin load, toxic relationships, the things that are all affecting the epigenome to create a regular pattern of continued alarm. And when we're in an alarmed state, we feel like we're in jeopardy at every moment because the body is fighting back all the time in survival mode. Whether human or horse.

To conclude

This field of epigenetics is relatively new, but it gives us tremendous hope for changing the operating system of biology. Back to genes being the hardware, with the epigenetics the software - basically like Microsoft Word or whatever program we've all got on our laptops. When we have MS Word open, all the different features of Microsoft aren't being expressed at the same time - it’s only ever about whichever keys we’re pressing at any given time.

It’s the same with biology - we can actually learn how to press the biological keys via lifestyle. It’s almost as if a bit more of the code of longevity, disease and aging has been cracked, in a way that goes straight to the root of the problem.

Get the diet right, get the phytochemicals right, and we drive immuno-rejuvenation, which helps the body’s epigenome.

And even better, it can taste pretty good too. Again whether human or horse 😉.

Originally posted 2.11.22