What Role Does Genetics Play In Our Health?

So often today when we are dealing with a state of dis-ease, if it isn’t something you caught (e.g. from exposure to a bacteria or virus), it is blamed on your failed genetics.  The other big culprit is your own body attacking itself as in auto-immune disease. Or, in other words, there is nothing that can be done as you were born with it and tough luck.  As I write and speak about frequently, this diagnosis is basically saying, “I don’t know what is causing your problem.  I see you are experiencing a particular symptom but have no idea why.”

I would like to enlighten you as to what is actually happening.  As with all health issues the state of being at dis-ease begins within the cells of the affected organ.  At the core of every cell is the nucleus which is made up of RNA and DNA.  The cell’s DNA carries all of the instruction each cell requires to be able to reproduce itself.  The RNA carries something else.  These are the instructions required by each cell to manufacture the enzymes necessary for its proper biological functioning. 

A simple example is the cells of your heart.  Every second of every day the RNA of all of your heart cells sends out instructions into the cellular plasma to make enzymes which make the heart beat.   This process requires the cell to contract and then relax.  The magic of this is that it is done in unison and is automatic.  The fascinating part of this whole process is the fact that specific minerals are required by each enzyme in order to work.  In heart tissue, Potassium is necessary for the contraction enzyme to work and Magnesium is required for the relaxing enzyme to work.  Additionally, Sodium and Chloride are necessary for the body to be able to get the Potassium and Magnesium into the heart cells.  Without all of these minerals (also known as electrolytes) the heart stops working.  Your genes can be working just fine at making the proper enzymes, but without the right minerals to catalyze or activate your enzymes, they will not work.  Without this knowledge of cellular functioning, it becomes easy to blame your genetics.

So, what is most important, the genes or the minerals?  The answer is they are equally important.  My belief is that your genes are most likely just fine.  Each of our cells is well protected.  What we can easily become deficient in is our tissue mineral levels.  This is due to what we are or are not eating and drinking.  Our food is being grown on minerally deficient soil and our water is, for the most part completely imbalanced in its mineral content.  This leads me to my conclusion that most genetic issues are primarily created by diet.  A pregnant mother’s diet can certainly create deficiencies in an embryo’s cellular structure, possibly affecting the genetic structure of the cell. To compound this, adults have a high propensity to eat what their parents fed them in their childhood.  If they ate poorly, they most frequently continue through life with the same eating habits.  Poor eating habits set the stage for cellular nutrient deficiencies.  Unfortunately, most people today do not know how to distinguish between nutrient rich or nutrient deficient food.

If you eat non-organic foods, which frequently are genetically modified, grown on poor minerally deficient soils and sprayed with toxic chemicals, you can be assured you are not getting much of what the plant would normally provide in the way of minerals and other essential nutrients.  If you eat processed foods, the ingredients are almost certain to be non-organic.  The normal refining processing removes most of the other important compounds in an attempt to make the end product last as long as possible.  Of utmost importance to remember is that usually large amounts of sugar and preservatives are added.

On top of these nutrient poor foods we have access to, is our water supply.  Most water supplies in our country today are completely imbalanced and deficient in  nutrient mineral.  Additionally, minerals like Chloride, Fluoride and Ammonia are added in excess of what our bodies truly need and are derived from questionable sources.

So, in a nutshell, without a good balance of minerals, amino acids, fats and carbohydrates, there is no way our RNA instructions to each cell are going to work.  In reality, it is our diet that is creating the problems, not our genes.  Today’s doctors are not trained in diet or cellular functioning.  We as people must wake up to this conundrum and begin learning how to eat well and pass this on to our children.

In good health,

Rick Wagner, M.S., C.N.

August 2022