Recent studies have now shown that you literally are what you eat indeed!
“Type II diabetes, heart disease due to obesity, insulin resistance, and hypertension are the diseases most strongly associated with the maternal diet during pregnancy,” says Karen Lillycrop, who specializes in perinatal nutrition at the University of Southampton, UK. There is growing evidence that our diets can effectively alter the expression and control of genes, therefore acting as a driving force for human evolution.
Epigenetics is essentially the study of changes that are purely phenotypically, i.e., a change in the phenotype without changes in the genotype. Elaborating, it studies how certain changes in the gene expressions sans any change in the underlying DNA sequence, are potentially heritable. This is a concept first proposed by the British biologist Conrad Waddington (1905–1975) in 1942 to describe how the environment plays a role in determining the phenotype of an organism. Accordingly, with respect to this concept, scientists are now investigating the role a person’s diet has to play in modifying gene expression in the individual and also the offspring. This study is highly significant in preventing or treating serious diseases; understanding the relationship between our eating habits and the genetic modification
might help us identify nutritional elements that can help prevent or treat such diseases. There are a plethora of studies being conducted in pursuit of this idea.
An investigation carried out in the German Research Centre for Environmental Health (and published in 2016), tested genetically identical mice that consumed a high-fat diet. It was found that these mice were more likely to produce obese offspring with impaired glucose tolerance, an early sign of type 2 diabetes in comparison to the control mice which was fed a normal diet. The University of Cambridge conducted an experiment in 2014, wherein it was revealed that malnourished pregnant mice bore offspring with glucose intolerance and pancreatic issues. Yet another research earlier this year produced a parallel outcome which established a connection between maternal infection in pregnant mice and the associated risk of neurodevelopmental disorders in their offspring. However it is important to note that all these studies were carried out on animals producing results exclusively in respect those animals and certainly cannot blindly be assumed that it is a similar case in humans as well.
Well, coming to humans’ side of the story, there is another experiment that remotely establishes that this concept can be applicable to humans, conducted in 2014. The scientists at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden asked 23 men and women to bicycle using only one leg for 45 minutes, 4 times a week for over 3 months. Later, the scientists compared muscle biopsies before and after the experiment and found that in the exercised muscle, new patterns had developed on genes associated with insulin response, inflammation and energy metabolism.
However, nothing satisfactory or conclusive has sprung up from all these investigations. Thereby rousing more curiosity among scientists and pushing them to conduct more studies. It seems as though the longer they look all the more answers they find and better we can all work to improve our health; if not for us, at the least for the good of our future generations.
