Genetic Healthicine

If you want to live a long, healthy life - choose your parents well.

How can we tell if we have healthy genes?  Can we measure the health of our genes? Can we affect our healthiness through choices related to our genes?

You have probably seen reports of diseases that are caused by genetic defects, or genetic tendencies towards disease.

A Search for the Healthy Genes, an article from Wired magazine, suggests that maybe we should search for, in the words of Maynard Olsen "mutated genes that make people healthier."

What is healthier? Should we search for genes that 'make people healthier'?  Or search for genes that make us healthy. Maynard goes on with an important observation:

"This is what physicians have always done: find sick people and find out why they're sick," he said. "It can't be emphasized enough how embedded that (mindset) is. "Studying healthy people is an essentially unexplored approach, and healthy genes are probably plentiful."

The field of genetic health is virtually unexplored in humans.  We have some research into genetic illness, and genetic dispositions for illness, but virtually no research into healthiness genes. 

We do know some complexities.  Many genetic factors that we know about can be good and bad.  Is there a  word for something that is good and bad? The genetic tendency for sickle cell anaemia, for example protects against malaria, but when the gene occurs twice, it cause the disease sickle cell anaemia. 

Many genetic factors are good for some aspects of health - and  not good for other aspects.  

When we look at the other layers in the hierarchy of health - it gets more complex.  How do our genes affect our nutritional health?  How do they affect our cellular health, our tissue health, our organ health, system health, body health, mind health, spirit health and community healthiness? 


We do know some simple things - most adult Asians, for example, are lactose intolerant. Is lactose intolerance healthy? or unhealthy?  It's not that simple. People who are lactose intolerant as adults should not consume milk. Most adult mammals are lactose intolerant, presumably an adaptation to ensure that the young animals get the milk.  We humans have adapted and take milk from cows (sheep, goats, etc.), so milk shortage is not an issue.  As a result, some humans can consume milk as adults.  This might be a healthy adaptation - but it's moot.  If you are, or are not - you can't choose lactose tolerance. You can only choose to drink, or not to drink milk. Or maybe you can.  Genes are 'activated'.  The gene for lactose intolerance appears to be activated by weaning - up to that time, it is dormant. Maybe if Asians don't stop drinking milk - then won't become lactose intolerant?  Maybe we have more genetic choices than think.

Each of us is an alphabet soup of genetics, with random genes chosen from each of our parents, and random (or not) genes activated by our environments. Genes can be activated, modulated or silenced. 

Genetics and Nutritional Health:  How do our genes affect our nutrition?  How does the activation of our genes affect our nutrition? Can we learn about our individual genetics to improve our personal nutrition health?  For example, we can find people proposing a "body type diet", a 'blood type diet", "nutritional typing".  Is there any scientific research to support any of these dietary approaches?  If so, can these diets be linked to genetic factors?  Do our nutritional needs change as genes are activated and modulated?

Genetics and Cellular Health:  do genes affect the health of our cells?  In fact, the activation of genes determines what types of cells develop in each part of our body.  Can we choose to influence these genes?  Scientists are starting to learn.  Sickle cell anaemia is a direct link from genetics to cells. 


There is another important genetic component of cellular health.  Many of the functioning cells in our bodies are foreign.  Our mouth, stomach, intestines and bowels have a very active group of healthy foreign cells to aid our digestion. It is estimated that the average healthy person harbours 500 different species of healthy bacteria cells. What do we know about the genetics of the healthy bacteria we harbour?  And what about the unhealthy bacteria?   Are some bacteria healthy sometimes - and unhealthy in other situations? 


Genetics and Tissue Health: is the health of our muscular tissues, our connective tissues, other tissues affected by our genes and by our genetic healthiness - the activation of our genes? There are, for example, connective tissue illnesses that are linked to genetics.  How about connective tissue healthiness that is linked to genetics? How much control might we have over this aspect or our health as we learn to understand genetic healthiness? 


Genetics and Organ Health: can we influence the health of our organs by making decisions about our genetics?   As we move through the Hierarchy of Health it becomes apparent that our current studies of health and healthiness are very shallow. Will we learn to regenerate damaged organs through studies of genetic healthiness? 


Genetics and Body Health: We tend to think of diet and exercise as the ways to improve the health of our bodies.   Those are the easiest to control directly and see positive or negative results. What types of exercise, for example are best for your body?  Can clues be found in your genetics?  What diets are best for your body?  What clues lie in your genes? 

Genetics and Mind Health: do your genes make your mind more active?  Less active? More fragile? Less fragile?  More prone to illness?  Less prone to illness? than someone else's genes?  Studies of twins suggest that tendencies to be introverted, or extroverted are linked to genetics.  Is it healthier to be introverted? Or Extroverted?  Probably neither is healthier - but it may help us improve our health, or take healthier actions if we understand our genetic mind tendencies. 


Genetics and Spiritual Health: It is interesting that the Catholic church expects priests to not have children. If the spirituality in the priest is not passed to a child - does the Catholic religion tend to 'breed out' spirituality?  Spirituality and spiritual healthiness is very poorly understood. We do not have any effective way to measure spiritual health - certainly not a way that would be accepted by all religions.  If we cannot measure spiritual healthiness - how can we expect to improve it?  Is genetics linked to spiritual health? 


Genetics and Community Health: An interesting concept.  Is community health learned?  Or genetic?  We can understand that community health of bees, wasps and ants is a result of their unique genetics.  What about people?  Measurement of community health is also a challenge we have not attempted to study.  We have many measures of the illnesses - but not the health -- of individuals in different communities.  Is that community health?  We need distinct measurements to determine and compare the health of different communities. Once we learn to effectively measure the health of communities - we will be able to start the analysis of how genetics and gene activation of individuals affect the health of the community. 


I'm not suggesting we try to change the world by controlling genetics through controlled reproduction.  The concepts of eugenics directly conflict with the goals of this blog - Personal Health Freedom. 


We need to study genetics from a health point of view.  And health from a genetics point of view.  At present, most 'scientific studies' of genetics seem to be done by drug companies, looking for ways to cure illness.  


We need to find ways to find and to create healthiness in and through our genes.


To your health,  tracy
www.personalhealthfreedom.com   

Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

Hans Rosling: Beautiful Statistics about Communities, Health and Money

Hans Rosling speaks elegantly about the health of communities (countries) and how it has changed over the last century - with some predictions into the future.  He gives us a 'grandmother' view of statistics in a most interesting presentaiton and finishes by demonstrating that the seemingly impossible is possible.

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html

Hans demonstrates over and over that the richest people are not the healthiest people.

You can see an earlier presentation, somewhat of a foundation for this one, here: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html
where he demonstrates that the problem with his students is not ignorance - it is pre-concieved ideas about 'we' and 'them'. The graphic presentation of statistics is the best I have ever seen.

yours in health, tracy
www.personalhealthfreedom.com

Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

Community Health - can we measure the health of our communities?

Community Health is the top layer of the hierarchy of health.  What is a community?  What is community health?  How can we measure community health?  How healthy are our communities?

The first level of community is the "community of self". Each of us lives in the community of our body, our mind, our spirit with our gods - and our devils.

No person is independent. Most interact with other people and other communities. Even a total hermit lives in a community of plants, animals, sun, moon and stars as well as his own mind, body and spirit.

The household is a fundamental unit of community and a valuable component of community health. A household might have only one person, interacting with their internal communities (mind, body, spirit) and external communities - but most households harbor more than one person, forming another community.  A household might be so large that it contains an extended family community - or even more.

Communities exist in many formal and informal ways.

Individuals, families and households interact with many external communities;  like minded people community associations (sports, leisure, goal oriented, etc.), business communities, worker communities, government communities, religious communities, to local community associations (residential area communities, civic communities, etc), communities of state, province, nation and ultimately the community of our planet - ultimately at least until we start to establish communities on other planets.

Often, as I write my blog, my research puts me to Wikipedia - today I decided it's time to make a donation.

Freedom of association and freedom of assembly are fundamental freedoms recognized by many human rights organizations. They are also fundamental components of health freedom.

You have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of healthiness. Of course you cannot pursue healthiness without the right to freely develop, associate with, join, work in and if we wish leave - our communities. Of course, the saying goes "you can choose your friends, but you are stuck with your family". We also exercise our freedoms to try and change our communities - to improve our healthiness.

The health of our communities is an important factor in the health of each of us.

Can we measure the health of our communities?  I have always believed that if you think you can, or you think you cannot - you are right.  I think we can measure the health of our communities. I believe we should start today.  We have already started.

Are some communities toxic?  What does that mean?  What can we do about toxic communities?  What communities are 'most healthy'?  What does that mean?  How can we encourage communities to move towards health?

I don't believe any community is totally toxic, or totally healthy. Measuring the health of our communities is a useful tool to measure overall health.

There have been some interesting attempts to measure health of communities.

Sam Harris, in his interesting book "The Moral Landscape, how Science can Determine Human Values" suggests that one moral framework is better than another when it "increases the well-being of conscious creatures". An interesting proposition that we could apply directly to the health of communities.  A community is healthier when it "increases the well-being of conscious creatures".  Of course each community's goal is to look after its own members - so there may be conflicts between communities.  But in general, a community's framework might be judged to be healthy - if it increases the well being of its members, and even healthier if it increases the well-being of all conscious creatures. We may find that some communities are happy to increase the well being of their members - to the detriment of non-members.  Or even communities that work to increase the well being of some members while decreasing the well being of other members - Hitler's Germany immediately comes to mind. Communities can have sub-communities that are at odds with the goals of the larger community.

Richard Wilkinson in his TED presentation titled "How economic inequality harms societies" measures ill health of different communities - states and countries and compares the ill health to economic inequality. If we are measuring health of individuals - I might complain that he measures illness, not health, but when measuring health of large communities - a measurement of illness is a somewhat reliable indicator of health.  Richard concludes that, as his title suggests, "economic inequality harms" communities, thus providing some valuable insight into how we might improve the health of our communities.  He leaves the details to us, and our communities.

Each of us live our lives in many communities.  Our health is affected by the health and healthiness of these communities. We can change our health status, by working to make our communities healthier.  Many communities work directly to improve our health.

We might ask if there exist communities that work to decrease healthiness?  I believe any community that attempts to restrict health freedom risks decreasing healthiness.  A community that attempt to eradicate another community, or the members of another community - is clearly working to decrease healthiness - even if they believe they are making their own community 'more healthy'.

Yours in health, tracy

Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

Personal Health Freedom