Many people who have a family history of diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, or cancer are fatalistic and assume they will eventually suffer and maybe die from these diseases, and there is nothing they can do. However, it’s not so much the genes you’re born with, but whether or not these genes are turned on or off.

Respected physician-scientist Dean Ornish, M.D. proved that heart disease, early prostate cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease can not only be prevented but can even be reversed with a plant-base, unprocessed food diet plus exercise. Dr. Ornish has written several books, his latest being “Undo It, How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases.” The book makes the case that healthy lifestyle changes are more powerful than gene-based therapies are or ever will be.

There is a saying in medicine that “genetics loads the gun, but environment pulls the trigger.” In other words, you don’t have to be a victim of your genes. Dr. Ornish has shown that lifestyle improvement “actually changes your genes—turning on (upregulating) genes that facilitate health and turning off (downregulating) genes that cause chronic inflammation, oxidative stress, and other mechanisms causing disease.”

Dr. Ornish’s studies have shown that certain proteins serve as switches that turn genes on and off. These switches respond to lifestyle changes summarized as “eat well, move more, stress less, love more.” In one study he found that “more than 500 genes were favorably changed in study participants after only three months on our lifestyle medicine program!”—a program covered by Medicare and several insurance plans.

Sirtuins are enzymes that are “good guys” that “wrap around DNA…proteins as a way of turning off harmful genes.” They are important in slowing aging and in preventing many chronic diseases. AGEs (advanced glycation end products) are “bad guys” that suppress the anti-aging and disease prevention effects of sirtuins, resulting in a higher incidence of many chronic diseases, including cataracts, macular degeneration, hypertension, atherosclerosis, heart failure, stroke anemia, kidney disease, osteoporosis, dementia, and age-related muscle loss.

Animal products, especially cooked ones, are high in these harmful AGEs. A soy burger cooked in a microwave has 20 AGE units, a beefsteak cooked in a pan with olive oil has 9,052 units; a barbecued chicken thigh has 16,668 AGE units.

TOR controls cell growth and metabolism, and is necessary in growing children. However, in adults TOR contributes to aging and to certain cancers—particularly breast and prostate. Animal products upregulate TOR, in part due to the amino acid leucine found in meat, chicken, fish and dairy. Plant-based foods down regulate TOR—particularly cruciferous vegetables (e.g. broccoli, cauliflower), blueberries, strawberries, green tea, soy milk, and spices such as turmeric.

In Dr. Ornish’s Lifestyle Heart Trial, he found that “the primary determinant of the amount of weight lost was the degree of adherence to our lifestyle medicine program, not age or genetics.” Whether health-promoting genes are turned on or disease-promoting genes are turned off is determined not only by what we eat, but also by whether we exercise, are stressed, or have loving relationships.

In summary, our genes are important in determining our propensity for developing many diseases, but whether or not these diseases actually occur is determined by whether these genes are turned on or off. And lifestyle plays a huge role in that. A few years ago, an issue of Time Magazine was devoted to amazing new health innovations. Some of these innovations hold promise for some relatively rare diseases. However, an inexpensive, low tech solution to most of the chronic diseases Americans suffer and die from us is on our plates right in front of us three times a day.

Dr. Greg Feinsinger is a retired family physician who started the non-profit Center For Prevention and Treatment of Disease Through Nutrition. For questions or to schedule a free consultation about nutrition or heart attack prevention contact him at gfmd41@gmail.com or 970-379-5718.