What are The Four Most Important Letters in the Alphabet?

A T C G

Why oh why are these the most important letters? What do they stand for? In a nutshell, they are the four letter of life as they stand for adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine.

These are the four bases that make up DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), and DNA is the blueprint for our cells. We know that our cells are what we as humans are made of. So the sequencing of these four letters basically is our personal blueprint.

Now think of a light switch. Just because the light switch is on the wall of a room does not mean that the room is lit. The switch must be turned on. Alternatively you can chose to leave the switch turned off. Similarly you can modify the expression of your genetic blue print by turning on or off certain genes. We cannot modify our genes, but we can turn them on or off. This is epigenetics.

Epigenetics is the study of how environment, diet and other lifestyle factors impact genetic expression. For example, research has also shown that a mother’s exposure to pollution could impact her child’s asthma susceptibility. Other studies show that certain dietary choices improve mental ability and other choices protect against cancer.

What this means for us is that just because something “runs in your family” does not mean that you are doomed to inherit it. In fact, according to a lecture I attended given by alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra, only 5% of disease mutations are fully penetrant – meaning that they predict disease. The other 95% are lifestyle-related.

This is great news! This means that how you live your life really impacts your health.

How do you know you’re on the right path? Well, there are some general pillars of good health that we are going to discuss next week. I also offer a non-invasive testing that can guide your choices, you can learn more about this here.

Originally published on Loop