Does lifestyle affect the genes?

Hi all,

The answer is yes, and strongly ... but do not get confused, the fact of doing a lot of exercise and training does not mean that our genes will change to make us stronger. It has to do mainly with what we consume on a day-to-day basis.

The lifestyle of each person can be reflected also in the diet they have, this being an environmental factor in nutrition that can affect several diseases. Nowadays, the branches of nutrition and genetics are united in an area of study that allows us to understand the nutritional factors that affect our genome.

Nutrigenomics

Nutrigenomics is a branch of genomics that provides knowledge at the molecular level of the components of the diet (and the foods that comprise it) that participate in the health of the individual, which are able to modify the expression and structure according to the genetic constitution of the individual.

This is because the bioactive components of the diet are capable of altering the action of the genes, participating as signaling molecules or transmitters. That is to say, a specific component of the food can be assimilated by a cell, and this turns out to be a transmitter that activates specific genes of the cell.

An example of this is retinoic acid, which is derived from retinoids from vitamin A from foods rich in carotenoids (red, orange, yellow, such as carrots, for example). This retinoic acid is a signaling compound in stem cells that activates the expression of specific genes so that there is a differentiation and specialization of these cells.

Similarly another example with hereditary diabetes. A father with diabetes can transmit to his son the dysfunctional genes that cause the disease, but these can remain inactive during the whole life of the child, to the point where there is a drastic change (high consumption of sugar) in the diet of this and activate the dysfunctional genes, subsequently causing the disease.

To avoid a problem like the latter there is another branch of nutritional genetics, called nutrigenetics, which is responsible for studying the genome of the individual to give information on what may be the ideal healthy diet for this.