Your Genes Remember a Sugar Hit

www.mercola.com

Human genes remember a sugar hit for two weeks. What’s more, prolonged poor eating habits could be capable of permanently altering your DNA.

A team studying the impact of diet on heart tissue found that cells showed the effects of a single sugar hit for 14 days. The cells switched off genetic controls designed to protect the body against diabetes and heart disease.

Regular poor eating could amplify the effect, with genetic damage lasting months or years, and potentially passing through bloodlines.


Sources:
Journal of Experimental Medicine September 2008, 29;205(10):2409-17
Tehran Times January 18, 2009

What to do from Dr. Mercola a trusted source here at Food For Fitness.

This finding lends even more credence to the phrase “you are what you eat.” When you eat sugar, not only do your genes turn off controls designed to protect you from heart disease and diabetes, but the impact lasts for two weeks!

Even more concerning, if you eat poorly for a long time, your DNA may become permanently altered, and the effects could be passed on to your children and grandchildren.

While you may not feel the effects of a poor diet immediately, in time health problems like diabetes, heart disease and others begin to surface.

What this all points to is even more support for the emerging field of epigenetics, which is the study of how environmental factors like diet, stress and maternal nutrition can change gene function without altering the DNA sequence in any way.

In other words, you are born with a set of genes, but the expression of those genes is not set in stone. Your genes can be either activated or silenced by various factors including your diet and even your mind. It is not your genes that dictate your future health, but rather the expression of those genes that matter.

So in the case of eating sugar, it’s now known that this switches off good genes that protect your body from disease. This is just one of many reasons why you may want to seriously limit or eliminate sugar from your diet.