Healthy Lifestyle For All

Is Stress Overwhelming You?

Dr. Duke Johnson, M.D.
Medical Director, Nutrilite Health Institute Center for Optimal Health

Stress: It's a serious health problem for every industrialized society in the world. In a way it's strange, because progress and technology were designed to make our lives easier. Instead, they have prevented us from getting away from our work and obligations.

In the past, you left work and you were done – but not anymore. These days, we often receive text messages and emails around the clock. Factors like competition, tight timelines, and economic pressures mean companies must operate at maximum efficiency in order to survive. The media reports daily on global economic instability and recession, so it's no wonder everyone feels stressed.

Stress can have serious negative short-term and long-term impacts on our health. Stress can raise blood pressure, lower immune function, trigger asthma attacks, cause ulcers, and increase the risk of digestive problems.¹ The bottom line: Controlling stress is critical if you want to achieve optimal health and increase your longevity.

The common recommendations for handling stress are usually not the most effective. When I began researching stress more than a decade ago, I collected more than 400 articles on the topic. Surprisingly, I found nearly everyone makes the same recommendations for handling stress. These typically include ideas like get away, take walks, meditate, listen to music, or find some alone time. While these techniques can help if you feel overwhelmed, they are temporary band-aids for a bigger problem.

Most of the stress we experience occurs when we lose sight of the priorities in our lives. Day-to-day "emergencies" demand most of your attention, and many of us have lost the ability to set boundaries on how and with whom we spend our time. In this way, life becomes a game of survival where your only goal is crossing things off your to-do list. As a result, you end up simply existing when you could be living a life that corresponds with your beliefs and goals.

For your health, you must learn to prioritize your life. You need to live according to your beliefs and learn to set boundaries. Remember, there are right and wrong ways to de-stress, which I explain in my new book, Optimal Health Revolution. By using stress reduction strategies that really work and keeping your eye on the big picture instead of the everyday emergencies, you can reduce stress and reach your goal of obtaining optimal health.

¹ Harvard Health Publications Group. “How Stress Affects the Body.” Stress Control (Harvard Special Health Report) May 2006: 37–41. Health and Wellness Resource Center. Web. 19 Aug. 2009.

Turning Off Your Genetic Risk

As you get older, certain diseases often follow. Diseases typically associated with aging include heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, dementia, obesity, diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, and joint problems. It's a long list, but don't be discouraged. Optimal health is all about delaying and helping to prevent your experiences with these diseases of aging.

All of these conditions are caused by interactions between our genes and the environment in which we live. Cardiovascular disease, which includes heart attacks and stroke, is one example. We know that our lifestyle – including smoking, physical activity, and diet – are major factors in our cardiovascular health. We also know that genetics play an important role, because a family history of heart attacks before the age of 60 is a significant risk factor for heart disease.

The good news is that you can make changes to reduce your genetic risk for these diseases of aging. Although you cannot change the genes you inherited from your parents, you can change the way your genes work to make your body healthier.

Nutrition is one of the strongest determinants of how your genes behave. Scientists now know that some of your genes have variations that alter their behavior. For example, a gene can be influenced to produce more or less of a certain chemical over time. The goal is to reduce the output of genes that produce chemicals that can be harmful, such as plaque-producing genes that can clog your heart's arteries.

This is where the exciting new science of nutrigenomics takes center stage. In nutrigenomics, we are working to discover which genes in your body are affected by certain nutrients. For example, what do the bad saturated fats do to the machinery of your body – your genes? This does not mean that you should have a customized diet, since the science is nowhere near making that a reality. But there are ways today to classify people into a few genetic patterns, and you can learn to make better use of certain nutrients and supplements.

What we can learn now from nutrigenomics is that you may be able to modify even the genetic risk factors for diseases associated with aging, with a healthy diet – risk factors we once thought were irreversible. Nutrigenomics gives you yet another compelling reason to strive for a healthy diet in order to live your life in optimal health.

Kenneth Kornman, D.D.S, Ph.D.
President and Chief Scientific Officer, Interleukin Genetics

Nutrigenomics: Where Diet and DNA Meet

Nutrigenomics: Where Diet and DNA Meet
Dr. Duke Johnson, M.D.
Medical Director, Nutrilite Health Institute

In the last decade, scientists have found that the effect of our diet on our bodies is far more complex than we ever imagined. These findings have opened up an exciting new area of science called nutrigenomics – the study of how diet works in our bodies at the molecular level.

In the past, we had a good idea of the ways the food we ate was used by our bodies, but we didn't understand the process completely. For many years, we have known our digestive tract breaks down food to its smallest building blocks, allowing the food to enter the bloodstream. For example, fats are reduced to fatty acids, and carbohydrates become simple sugars. These basic components – along with vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients – enter the bloodstream from the digestive tract, pass through the liver for processing, and are then transported to every living cell in our body.

Today, we know much more about what happens to those nutritional building blocks once they enter our cells. Not long ago, scientists believed these nutritional components did most of their work in the region of the cell located outside the nucleus called the cytoplasm. We knew these nutritional components were needed to produce energy and help with many other cellular functions. But, we were unaware these basic nutrients actually influenced our genetic code as well.

Recently, a significant amount of research has shown many of the nutrients we eat actually enter the cell nucleus and affect our genetic code, known as DNA. The nucleus is a special compartment inside the cell that holds our DNA. Another term for DNA is genome, and by combining the words "nutrients" and "genome," we get "nutrigenomics," the study of how the nutrients we eat affect our DNA.

The relationship between our diet and our DNA is quite complex. DNA is made up of genes, which are the "blueprints" of proteins responsible for running the reactions in our cells. Some genes make good proteins known as enzymes, and other genes make proteins that can be harmful to our health in large amounts. It is also important to know that all of our genes aren't always turned on. Genes are like a light switch. We turn them "on" or "off" with our lifestyle choices.

Nutrigenomics is helping us understand how nutrition affects our health better than ever before. For example, unhealthy foods may actually switch "on" some of those harmful genes. On the flip side, healthy foods that provide good nutrients can likely switch "off" those bad genes.

Though the science of nutrigenomics is relatively new, it is already allowing us to expand our knowledge of nutrition. As you can see, it is also strengthening the case for healthy eating – showing you that the food you eat has a tremendous effect on your health and disease risk, even at the genetic level.

Special Note: Fad diet promoters often have no knowledge of nutrigenomics and commonly recommend foods that turn on bad genes. Since we work with some of the most knowledgeable people in the field of nutrigenomics, you can feel confident that my recommendations concerning food take this field of science into consideration with your best health in mind.

Dr. Duke Johnson, M.D.
Medical Director, Nutrilite Health Institute

How Inflammation Is the Root Cause of the Biggest Killers and How the Cutting-edge Sceince of Nutrigenomics Can Transform Your Long-term Health